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Medivizor’s Mission is to:

Improve the lives of people with serious or chronic medical
conditions and of those who care for them.

Effectively apply software and the social web to the
field of health for the betterment of humanity.

Values

The values by which we live and operate at Medivizor are:

Respect – We respect what patients and medical professionals cope with on a day-to-day basis. We respect the patients’ and their caregivers’ rights to know all information about their medical conditions, whether positive or negative, whether or not disclosed to them by their medical team. We respect the professionalism and interests of medical professionals involved in helping people prolong and improve their lives. We respect our partners, employees, healthcare professionals, and other stakeholders, and will treat them with the respect they deserve.

Innovation – We will continuously innovate our offerings (including the services we provide) as well as our marketing and business models. We will never rest on our laurels and will not fear cannibalizing our solutions. We expect and encourage innovation to come from anyone, including our users.

Perseverance – We don’t expect our mission to be completely realized overnight. In fact, we believe ongoing success can only come with hard and continuous effort. Obstacles will be overcome to achieve our mission.

Optimism + Realism – We blend optimism with realism. Our vision is bold, and we are optimistic that we will achieve it. However, we must be realistic in that pursuit. We will not tolerate persistent pessimism nor mistake it for realism.

Life First – We are here to improve and prolong lives. We will not do so by draining the life of all those involved in Medivizor. We value life of our users, our partners, and our employees.

Oren Fuerst, Ph.D.

Executive Chairman

Dr. Fuerst is a seasoned entrepreneur, investor, advisor and inventor of technologies commercialized by numerous leading medical companies, including Becton Dickinson (NYSE: BDX). He serves as the Managing Director of Strategic Models, a New York-based investment- and ideas-nurturing boutique, which he founded in 1999.

Among his latest initiatives, in 2009 he co-founded and became Chairman of Circ MedTech, a developer of an HIV-prevention medical device, and in 2010 he co-founded LabStyle Innovations, a developer of a smartphone blood-based glucose monitor. Dr. Fuerst also co-founded and became Chairman of Tevel Global, a global network of Angel investors with a focus on Israeli-related technology companies. Dr. Fuerst was the initiator and co-Director of the Technology Valuation Executive Program at Columbia Business School, and served as a faculty member at Yale University School of Management and Yale International Center for Finance, focusing on International and Technology Valuation and Management.

Dr. Fuerst has written many publications on entrepreneurship, technology valuation, and strategy (including “From Concept to Wall Street” published by Prentice Hall), and columns for leading financial newspapers (including the Financial Times).

Dr. Fuerst holds an M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University Business School. He holds a Dual Magma Cum Laude Bachelor’s degree from Tel Aviv University in Accounting and Economics.

Tal Givoly

Chief Executive Officer

Tal has over 25 years of systems and software development experience. He has held management positions in technology, innovation, intellectual property, research, development, standards, and product management at Amdocs, XACCT, MIS, and other companies, with a proven track record in “realizing visions,” both in startups from inception and in multinational corporations.

Tal was Chief Scientist at Amdocs (NYSE: DOX) and led innovation activities across the company including heading up Amdocs’ technology incubation unit and open innovation programs (2004-2011).

Tal is a prolific inventor with over 25 granted patents and many more pending. He is recognized for his passion for, and expertise in, innovation, being invited to speak at major industry events such as Mobile World Congress and CTIA. He was also actively involved in industry forums and standard bodies including the TM Forum, IETF, ATIS, and IPDR.org. Tal was a director on the board of IPDR.org and TM Forum. He holds a Dual B.Sc. Cum Laude in Mathematics and Physics from Tel Aviv University.

Prof. Steven Kaplan, MD

Chief Medical Officer

Dr. Kaplan is a world-renowned urologist and researcher, and co-founded numerous technology initiatives, including MediData Solutions (NASDAQ: MDSO), the largest clinical trials data management company. He received a BS in biochemistry from CUNY - Brooklyn College in 1978 and graduated from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1982. Dr. Kaplan was the Given Foundation Professor of Urology, as well as Vice Chairman of the Department of Urology at Columbia University from 1998– 2005. He also served as Administrator and Chief Financial Officer of the Department.

Currently, Dr. Kaplan is the E. Darracott Vaughan Professor of Urology and Chief of the Institute of Bladder and Prostate Health at Weill Cornell Medical College, and Director of the Iris Cantor Men's Health Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Kaplan is a Diplomate of the American Board of Urology and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He is a recognized authority on the study of benign diseases of the prostate and female urology. He has published more than 750 articles and 140 abstracts, and has made over 275 presentations in more than 35 countries.

Dr. Kaplan is a member of more than 30 professional organizations and holds several leadership positions at both The New York Presbyterian Hospital and the American Urologic Association. He has been awarded five NIH (National Institutes of Health) grants. He was awarded the John K. Lattimer Award for Lifetime Achievement in Urology by the National Kidney Foundation.

Alexis E. Te, MD

Chair of Medivizor Advisory Board

Dr. Te received his medical degree from Weill Medical College at Cornell University and completed his urology residency training at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center as well as a fellowship in neurourology and urodynamics at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. Dr. Te continued as a academic and clinical faculty member, and became a leader in the development of new techniques for treatment of benign prostatic disorders in men as well as the evaluation and treatment of incontinence in men and women. He continues to lead in research and academic and clinical education in areas such as Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), Therapies in BPH, Incontinence, Prostatis, Neurourology & Urodynamics, Female Urology, Interstitial Cystitis, Laser Surgery, and Prostate Cancer as well as Men's Health Issues.

Dr. Te maintains memberships in many professional organizations, is a Fellow in The New York Academy of Medicine, currently holds editorial responsibilities with 10 professional/scholarly journals, and has consistently been ranked as a top physician in Super Docs (2008 to 2013), Castle Connelly: Best Doctor in NY Metro Area – Urology (2007 to 2013), and Best Doctors in America Database (2009 to 2013).

For more info visit:

Achiau Ludomirsky, MD

Andrall E. Pearson Professor of Pediatric Cardiology

Dr. Achi Ludomirsky is the Andrall E Pearson Professor of Pediatric Cardiology and the Director of the Division of Pediatric Cardiology and Professor of Pediatrics in the NYU School of Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics.

Ludomirsky is a pioneer in fetal and pediatric heart imaging and one of the most prominent pediatric cardiologists in the country. He brings a broad vision and a commitment to excellence in patient care, education and advancing our understanding of heart disease in children. Ludomirsky is known nationally and internationally for his instrumental role in the development of novel imaging and therapeutic procedures for fetuses and children with congenital heart disease, including transesophageal echocardiography, three-dimensional echocardiographic reconstruction and therapeutic ultrasound. He served on multiple committees and was the president of the pediatric echocardiography society (SOPE) as well as the chair of the pediatric council of the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) for four consecutive years.

At the NYU School of Medicine, he continues to develop new techniques to use ultrasound not only for imaging but also for noninvasive treatment of children and fetuses with congenital heart disease.

Ludomirsky is currently a senator in the Faculty Council and the NYU Senate representing the Medical school and the Department of Pediatrics.

For more info visit:

Giora Weisz, MD

Chairman of Cardiology, Shaare Zedek Medical Center.

Dr. Weisz is the Chairman of the cardiology department at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel; Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, and faculty of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation in New York. Dr. Weisz graduated from the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, Israel. He completed his cardiology fellowship training at the Carmel Medical Center-Technion School of Medicine in Haifa, Israel, and underwent advanced training in interventional cardiology at the renowned Lenox Hill Hospital and Cardiovascular Research Foundation in New York City. Dr. Weisz is an internationally recognized researcher focused on innovative technologies in cardiovascular medicine. He has pioneered the use of novel robotic-enhanced coronary interventions, including navigation and positioning technologies. Dr. Weisz has been the Principal Investigator for pivotal clinical studies leading to FDA approval of cutting-edge technologies for interventional cardiology device positioning and navigation and robotics, as well leading multicenter studies in interventional imaging and the combination of PCI with pharmacological anti-ischemic treatment. Dr. Weisz has published extensively in the most prestigious peer-review medical journals related to the field of interventional cardiology.

For more info visit:

Esther Dyson

Founder of HICCup – Way to Wellville contest

Founder of HICCup – a five-community contest/trial to produce health and generate data/models to inspire others. Former journalist and technology analyst. Now an angel investor, philanthropist, and commentator focused on breakthrough implementations in health, government transparency, digital technology, biotechnology, and space travel. Produced PC Forum and edited Release 1.0 newsletter, 1982-2007. Wrote Release 2.0: A design for living in the digital age, 1996. Trained as a cosmonaut (backup to Charles Simonyi), Star City, Russia, 2008-2009.

Esther is also an advisor to Startup Health, Blueprint Health, HealthXL and an

For more info visit:

Harry Fisch, MD, FACS

Clinical Professor of Urology and Reproductive Medicine

Dr. Harry Fisch is a board certified urologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He is one of the nation's leaders in the diagnosis and treatment of Men's health issues as well as sexuality and fertility problems in couples. Internationally renowned, he has pioneered microsurgical techniques for disorders associated with male infertility such as vasectomy reversal and varicocele repair. He has been named to the “Best Doctors in America" and "New York Magazine Top Doctor" the past 9 years. He regularly appears on the Dr. Oz show as a medical expert on Men's Health.

For over fifteen years, Dr. Fisch has focused his research, practice, and surgery on male infertility and reproduction. His recent article describes a new microsurgical technique for varicocelectomy. In his private practice in Manhattan, Dr. Fisch has successfully treated thousands of men with sexuality and fertility problems. Dr. Fisch's research on sperm counts and endocrine disrupters has resulted in multiple research articles and international attention. His work has been frequently cited in a variety of publications, including USA Today, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He has appeared on television's 60 Minutes, 20/20, CNN and Today, among many others.

For more info visit:

Kathy E. Magliato, MD, MBA, FACS

Dr. Magliato is one of the few female heart surgeons in the world and specializes in Heart/Lung Transplantation and Ventricular Assist Device implantation. Currently, she is Director of Women’s Cardiac Services at St. John’s Medical Center in Santa Monica, CA and President of the Greater LA American Heart Association. In addition to her 17 years of training as a cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Magliato recently received her MBA at the UCLA Anderson School of Business. Dr. Magliato is a nationally recognized authority on heart disease in women and has been featured extensively in the media including shows by Barbara Walters, Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey. Her memoir, Heart Matters, received a 4/4 star review by People magazine.

For more info visit:

Rache M. Simmons, MD

Chief of Breast Surgery, Professor of Surgery

Rache Simmons, MD, is the Chief of Breast Surgery, Professor of Surgery and the Anne K. and Edwin C. Weiskopf Professor of Surgical Oncology at NewYork- Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Simmons serves as Director of the Weill Cornell Breast Center. Under Dr. Simmon's leadership, the Center is one of only two in New York that is accredited by the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers, in recognition of its excellence in clinical care.

A nationally-renowned, board-certified breast surgeon, researcher and educator, Dr. Simmons is widely recognized for her innovations and contributions in the field of minimally invasive breast cancer surgery. She has done extensive research in ways to provide minimally invasive and cosmetically advantageous surgery to breast cancer patients. A pioneer in the use of cryoablation for benign breast tumors and small breast cancers, she is currently leading a national, multicenter NIH trial to evaluate cryoablation therapy for breast cancer. She is a recognized leader in the area of skin sparing mastectomy, in which she has the largest published series in the New York Metropolitan area. Dr. Simmons is well known for pioneering the nipple-sparing mastectomy operation.

The author of over 100 scientific articles and book chapters on the surgical treatment of breast cancer, she has been invited to lecture at more than 100 national and international professional medical conferences, and frequently serves as a medical consultant to the consumer media. Dr. Simmons serves on the editorial board of six prestigious medical journals. She enjoys presenting information to women about state of the art breast cancer treatments through the media and is frequently featured on Good Morning America, CBSINBC/Fox/Lifetime/Oxygen TV and the Oprah Winfrey Show. She is also regularly interviewed for her innovative breast cancer treatment in Ladies Home Journal, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, Self, Bazaar, NY Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal.

For more info visit:

Prof. Zamir Halpern, MD

Prof Zamir Halpern was born and trained in Israel. He received his medical degree from the Hebrew University and completed his residency of Internal medicine and fellowship of Gastroenterology at Tel-Aviv Medical Center.

In a short time he became the chief of Gastroenterology at the Edith Wolfson Medical Center and at Holon and 4 years later at the Tel-Aviv Medical Center.

He is one of the leading gastroenterologists in Israel and well recognized over the world. He was the chair of the Israeli Association for study of the Liver and the Israeli Society for gastroenterology.

He is the author of more than 150 scientific publications and he is the head of research laboratory affiliated to Tel-Aviv University and his main interest is in personal nutrition and GI immunology.

He serves as a consultant to medical devices companies such as: Peer medical. Smart, GI View and others.

For more info visit:

David Edelman

Co-Founder and President of Diabetes Daily

David is an entrepreneur, author, speaker and advocate with a passion for helping people live healthier, happier and more hopeful lives.

David’s two primary roles are Co-Founder and President of Diabetes Daily, a leading diabetes online community, and Director of Product Strategy at LabStyle Innovations, creators of Dario, a smart meter poised to transform the way chronic health conditions are monitored and managed.

The thread that connects his work is a belief that we can create smart software to help people understand their health, figure out what to do next, and sustain positive choices for the long run. In practice, this means bringing together real-time health data (blood sugars, activity levels, food choices), providing contextually relevant education, facilitating communication with peer and professional support resources, and making it easier to make good choices.

David’s other passions include promoting entrepreneurship and economic development in Northeast Ohio. David is also President of the Hebrew Free Loan Association, a non-profit organization that has been providing interest-free loans to responsible individuals since 1904. We have helped over 25,000 families with over $8.5 million dollars in loans.

For more info visit:

Keren Rozenfeld

Head of Operations & Engagement

A battle with breast cancer fought by one of Keren’s closest family members brought her to join Medivizor as she realized the real and profound need for personalized health information to help strike a meaningful work-life balance.

In her capacity as head of operations and engagement Keren brings to life all operations of the Medivizor’s service while making the service continuously more engaging for patients, caregivers, medical professionals and Medivizor’s partners.

Keren has over 15 years of experience in developing leading edge enterprise software products in a large corporation, including managing program management, R&D, professional services & operations.

Before joining Medivizor, Keren held the position of director of Portfolio Management at Amdocs (NASDAQ: DOX) product division. Having the mandate and charter to streamline and govern the integrated development of the Amdocs R&D portfolio, translating the strategic executive directive to the operational programs.

Keren is married and a proud mother to 3 happy kids.

Featured News

Medivizor helps users understand and access medical information about serious or chronic diseases while providing the necessary context about where it came from. The unique platform combines patent-pending personalization technology with easy-to-understand synopses of complex medical material, and mixes in the wisdom of the crowd.
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Doctors often warn patients to avoid Internet searches of their medical conditions because there’s so much junk science that turn up on web searches. But there are certainly reliable websites out there that can provide valuable information like the American Cancer Society and National Cancer Institute, which provide up-to-date resources for patients on a variety of cancers.
The main drawback of such sites, however, is that you may need to spend hours wading through the ton of information they contain to find answers to specific questions. Enter a free website called Medivizor, which allows patients to input information about their cancer, heart disease, or diabetes diagnosis as well as their age, gender, body weight, and other health factors in order to get a personalized report online with recommended links for further reading.
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When people are diagnosed with a disease, the first move they, or their family members typically make is to book a long appointment with Dr. Google or WebMD. A New York-based startup named Medivizor thinks they’re making a mistake. Now it will get its shot to prove it.
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Improving health outcomes by delivering personalized, accessible and timely medical information curated from thousands of scientific journals and clinical trials. Tal Givoly is disrupting the mobile health industry and how patients and caregivers use the internet. Why? He has a better way where medical information is personalized, updated, understandable, and most importantly, actionable for patients and their caregivers.
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PARIS, June 8, 2015 (TICsanté) (by Google Translate) - The Doctors 2.0 & You Conference, which was held in Paris on Thursday and Friday, returned to the use of data in specific cases linked to cancers, diabetes, infections or 3D printing... Several innovations in digital health were presented at the conference. The company Medivizor , who won in 2014 the first prize of "Doctors 2.0 & You contest start-ups", aims to help patients from becoming "chronic researchers on the internet," said his Co-founder, Tal Givoly. This network of experts specializing in online curation of medical information designed to meet the difficulties of patients to find reliable information for them. "90% of the information one finds on Google is irrelevant, redundant , outdated or unreliable, " explained Tal Givoly. The aim of the service is to provide a personalized summary of the state of the art according to the patient's needs. Less than a year after launching the service, several US hospitals have already adopted the service.
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Dr. Google's not all bad. But even if you're sold on the 24/7 availability of healthcare information online, the never-ending breadth of data out there is actually part of the problem. How are patients to find and discern what is truly valuable from it all?
By recommending the following resources to patients, you and your staff can both encourage patients to be self-empowered and deter them from being taken advantage of by (sometimes purposefully) inaccurate online advisers.
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This is the first in a series of profiles highlighting the physicians that are part of the #BCSM Community. Specifically, she addresses the issue of where patients could find reliable information online.
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Israel's Medical AchievementsUnited with Israel Feb 23, 2015

Sick? Medivizor Thinks for YouWeet Magazine Feb 23, 2015

Seriously Ill. You will only get the message. From that moment your life takes a different turn. Everything now runs only to that one. The treatment is started. You worry. Will it go well? Do the doctors there know everything? Do they know of the latest study results? The new free tool - Medivizor -can be your help at hand.
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(translated from Mandarin by Google Translate) Here in Israel in 2015 to present you 10 of the most noteworthy Internet healthcare companies.Innovation and entrepreneurship practices from the kingdom, will bring inspiration how Chinese companies?
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The Google of MedicineJerusalem Post Jan 01, 2015

Medicine and technology have been advancing in tandem during recent decades. You’re searching for information on diseases and find yourself drowning in the endless results you get? The start-up Medivizor developed a website that offers a targeted search after answering a few questions.
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A personalized health information app just trounced 50 other startups to win the mHealth Israel Conference competition. The winner of the mobile health startup contest was Medivizor, a company that helps people coping with serious or chronic illness get cutting-edge, reliable, health information.
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Most health information available on the Internet suffers from one major flaw: It’s likely to be irrelevant. That’s right: The Mayo Clinic and WebMD illness pages you find through a Google search after being diagnosed with a condition are mostly generic and often useless for your particular situation.
Tal Givoly, cofounder of Medivizor, envisions a different experience. According to Givoly, Medivizor is a web-based platform that can deliver personalized information about patient’s condition, translating it from medical jargon into plain, readable English.
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The 1776 Challenge Cup headed to Tel Aviv this evening to hear solutions from dozens of Israeli startups. The event featured a packed audience of investors, entrepreneurs and tech community members. Altogether, about 40 startups presented their ideas in the categories of education, energy, health and mobility & cities.
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A doctor blogging about his experience with Medivizor and Medivizor MD pilot in which he's participating: We’ve all used Google to self diagnose our various medical conditions, right? Were they enjoyable or efficient experiences? I doubt it! While I’m very good at sifting through “doctor Google” for urology conditions, I’m very bad at rummaging through non-urology conditions and information outside of my specialty training. After being a patient several times during the last few years, I noticed I used Google even more poorly in that role.
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Medivizor helps users understand and access medical information about serious or chronic diseases while providing the necessary context about where it came from. The unique platform combines patent-pending personalization technology with easy-to-understand synopses of complex medical material, and mixes in the wisdom of the crowd.
Read full news post

Radio interview on Late Night Health hosted by Mark Alyn.
Tal Givoly – CEO and co-founder of Medivizor – A discussion on how Medivizor can save you time and possibly a life by providing the most current information about serious diseases.
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Doctors often warn patients to avoid Internet searches of their medical conditions because there’s so much junk science that turn up on web searches. But there are certainly reliable websites out there that can provide valuable information like the American Cancer Society and National Cancer Institute, which provide up-to-date resources for patients on a variety of cancers.
The main drawback of such sites, however, is that you may need to spend hours wading through the ton of information they contain to find answers to specific questions. Enter a free website called Medivizor, which allows patients to input information about their cancer, heart disease, or diabetes diagnosis as well as their age, gender, body weight, and other health factors in order to get a personalized report online with recommended links for further reading.
Read full news post

Medivizor Announces Its Advisory BoardMedivizor Jun 30, 2014

The new Advisory Board’s diverse, highly skilled brain trust brings together expertise in medicine, science, health technology, patient advocacy, and business to help guide the strategic direction of Medivizor’s award-winning service.
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Doctors 2.0 & You Announced the Results of the 4th Edition International Digital Health Start-up Contest: 1st place for Medivizor (Israel) and 2nd place for Medexo (Germany).
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How a diverse team leads to better accesseMed / Entrepreneurship.org Jun 03, 2014

Access -- to providers, patients, payers, or anyone who can make a healthcare startup successful -- is a sticking point for many early-stage entrepreneurs. Building a diverse team has helped Medivizor, a startup that provides a personalized digest of state-of-the-art science for people with chronic conditions, find a variety of ways to connect with key stakeholders, said co-founder and CEO Tal Givoly.
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Interview with Medivizor's CEO Tal GivolymHealthSpot May 29, 2014

mHealth Spot had a chance to interview Medivizor's CEO Tal Givoly and ask him few questions about his business.
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In a bid to boost health literacy and to improve the interactions between physicians and patients, Medivizor has massively expanded its healthcare content platform for patients in the past year and has added some interesting collaborations.
It has expanded its content generation platform from a handful of diseases such as diabetes, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer and breast cancer to include more than 400 medical conditions. It’s also working with several clinics that “prescribe” Medivizor to their patients. Among the medical institutions it is working with are Lowell General Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center.
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Making The Most of Social Media After a Cancer DiagnosisComing Together to Fight Cancer May 14, 2014

If and or when you or someone you love gets diagnosed with a disease you are going to have a lot of questions. And as mentioned in a previous blog, Doctors Aren’t Gods, it is inadvisable to blindly turn over your trust to a doctor. Even if you do, they may advise you about choices that you have, and the more and better informed you are, the better position you will be in to make a choice that is in line with your wishes. If you google search things like cancer, heart disease or diabetes, you’ll get over 200 million responses in less than .3 seconds (assuming a good broadband/DSL internet connection)....
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Doctors 2.0 & You, “THE international healthcare social media conference in Europe, “announced today the names of the digital health start-up candidates who will compete in the start-up contest, June 5-6, 2014 on the campus of Cité Universitaire Internationale in Paris. The finalists hail from Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, Spain.
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Catching up with MedivizorTelehealth & Telecare Aware Apr 02, 2014

This Editor had a quick catchup this week with Medivizor’s CEO and co-founder, Tal Givoly, at the introduction of Eco-Fusion (a personalized wellness/tech fusion service founded by Dr. Oren Fuerst, Medivizor executive chairman and co-founder; more on this when it goes to market). Medivizor’s USP is that it provides free, personalized, research-level information on serious or chronic health conditions based on specific user information.
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Product Update: New Service from IVF-WorldwideOBG Management Mar 26, 2014

Targeted treatment and clinical trial information is available through IVF-Worldwide, a broad-based, open-access journal that publishes current information on in vitro fertilization (IVF), genetics, and stem cell therapy. Physicians and clinics can now offer information to patients through a cooperative agreement between IVF-Worldwide and Medivizor, an Internet platform that provides consumer-based medical information.
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New eBook: Top 2013 Breast Cancer PapersMedivizor Mar 26, 2014

Medivizor experts selected some of the most important breast cancer research papers published in 2013 and compiled the service’s summaries and interpretations of them into a free eBook.
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Niche playersJerusalem Post Mar 19, 2014

By Bernard Dichek in The Jerusalem Report: From bloodless circumcision to personalized medical searches, Israeli medical entrepreneurs are coming up with ideas to solve unmet problems.
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....One more thing before I end…have you noticed the Medivizor ad on the left of the website? It’s a terrific resource for all us dealing with Lynch syndrome and other health issues.
If you have a serious or chronic medical condition, Medivizor can help. Sign up for free to receive information and subsequent updates about cutting-edge research,treatment options, relevant clinical trials, and more – personalized just for you.
I highly recommend you sign up for their medical updates. You won’t need a medical degree in order to understand the research, treatment options, and the clinical trials they discuss; but most importantly Medivizor will help you become a better advocate for your own health.
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Digital tools are guiding patients through care experiences and individual procedures ensuring a better end to end experience: A side effect of the vast amounts of information at our disposal is the desire to know more. Our digital resources provide a seemingly infinite amount of data, but also raise new questions, which we may never have thought to consider in the first place. This is effect is only amplified when it comes to our own health, as new research about our symptoms or treatments might lead us down a rabbit hole of half truths and undue anxiety. In the latest Future of Health report, PSFK Labs noticed how a number of patient-centered services are helping alleviate this situation by arming individuals with timely guidance and support before, during and after their treatments.
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I don’t like messages “pushed” at me online. But I’ve found a resource – Medivizor.com – that does exactly that, yet benefits me. Medivizor sources the specific things I’m interested to learn more about in diabetes, and sends them directly to me. Medivizor is a new and unique online health information service that personalizes health information for patients, caregivers and medical professionals, and sends it to you via email. The service is free and the information is specific and relevant to your condition, situation, needs and interests.
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Each business has a story. No matter if the business is a Goliath like Wal-Mart, or a local business owned by a couple or family, the business has roots in an idea. For each business owner, the story of their journey can range from monetary needs or the passion for a unique project. Each story is different though the reasons may remain the same. No matter the tale, the background behind each and every business is what fuels each and every brand.
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A quick Google search for "breast cancer information" yields 220million hits in two-tenths of a second.
That's great stuff—but seriously??? How can anyone be expected to sort through that much online medical information to find what's pertinent? Is it outdated? Is it reliable?
I'm a person who needs to be involved in my treatment. Back in 2006, it took four months from the doctor seeing the spot on a routine mammogram to being diagnosed with invasive lobular breast cancer. During that time, I spent hours researching on Google only to have a curveball thrown at me when I went back to the doctor and he said, "Oh no, that doesn't pertain to you."
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Whether you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes, a specific type of cancer, or hemophilia, the information that you need could be very different than the generalized information provided on most medical websites. Medivizor is a new website that allows you to get precisely the research and information you specifically need for your personalized healthcare needs. And the best part: it’s totally free.
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Social media is a radical shift in the way we communicate. The healthcare conversation is no longer a one-way narrative but is evolving into a global, participatory discussion. If you want to find where that discussion is most visibly and influentially taking place you need look no further than Twitter. Here you will find the latest healthcare news, the most innovative medical research and the conversations that matter to health consumers discussed in real-time across the globe. Physicians, nurses, medical and health researchers and other allied healthcare professionals interact with patients, pharmaceutical representatives, support groups, opinion leaders, and anyone with an interest in healthcare.
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Dr. Kaplan joins Grand Magazine Radio today to share how a patient or patient advocate can empower themselves with the powerful new service provided by Medivizor. This service enables to the patient to focus on the specific disease or condition that they suffer from while information is delivered to them from medical experts around the world.
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eMed's 6 to follow in entrepreneurshipeMed Dec 01, 2013

Many things can make you a better entrepreneur. But here's one that certainly helps: networking. So every week eMed is going to highlight some healthcare and life science entrepreneurs on twitter you should consider following. This is not an endorsement, but an encouragement. Entrepreneurship is better when everyone joins the conversation. So please join us by following @emedcommunity and participating on eMed at Entrepreneurship.org.
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From the program "Your Family Matters" hosted by Dr. Keith Kanner. Dr. Kanner interviews Tal Givoly (CEO of Medivizor) about Medivizor. The full interview, originally aired as one segment in a 3-segment show on http://radioactivebroadcasting.net (specifically at http://bit.ly/1dRZOwr).
Watch the video

Medivizor’s Donation Campaign of ThanksMedivizor Nov 20, 2013

Medivizor has launched a donation campaign from now till New Years Day 2014. For every person who signs up to Medivizor with one of three conditions (breast cancer, diabetes, prostate cancer), Medivizor will donate to a chosen cause.
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This is How You'll Get the Health Information You NeedGlobes Israel Nov 09, 2013

(Translated from Hebrew) Medivizor was born to meet the needs of its founders . Oren Fuerst, one of the founders says: "When my mother got sick I became the designated "case manager" of the disease - I tried to navigate the tangle of bureaucracy, choose the best doctors and treatments best to understand along with why a particular treatment is chosen and what should be the warning signs that something was wrong ."
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Founder and CEO of Medivizor, Tal demonstrated the community aspect of health care through technology that provides comprehensive medical profiles for patients. Medivizor is able to give relevant health information to the user, instead of scaring the person with the abundance of information currently available on the web. Tal has a long proven track record in “realizing visions,” both in startups from inception and in multinational corporations and Health 2.0 was happy to host such a bright member of the health technology space.
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(Translated via Google Translate from Google. Go to source to read original)
Pew Internet and American Life According to the results of a survey conducted by the Internet, which will research health information Google uses the first 8 out of every 10 people. To the fact that none of the data is not very surprising results. We are resorting to major search engines first when searching for information on the Internet and Google are the most popular in the search engines. Google's internet users, the undisputed quality of service, but when things get health information subject to change. Internet users when they use Google to find health information, or information obtained can be routed point is often inaccurate or incomplete. In California, the Health 2.0 event in Santa Clara, one of the topics of conversation that is exactly the situation the online source of health information, the right to direct patients.
Tal, CEO and founder of Medivizor'un Givoly: "Now, people when they are sick internet as per first undergo. If they do they often remain under a lot of information and misinformation yönlendirilebiliyorlar flood. "He said.
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Recent data from the Pew Internet and American Life project found that 8 in 10 online health inquiries start at a search engine like Google, a number that hasn’t changed since 2000. But medical information from a search engine is often incomplete or untrustworthy, and isn’t always enough information to answer specific questions. At the Health 2.0 event in Santa Clara, California this week, several creators of online patient communities talked about their approaches to connecting patients with health information online.
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When Anne Marie heard the "C" word she reacted as we all do. Shock, denial and then self advocacy. She discovered a free web site Medivizor that linked her to Doctor's and research world wide that helped walk her through her treatment and recovery. A passionate recounting of personal strength and the power of finding an online advocate.
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Medivizor, which was one of the better discoveries of our CE Week (NYC) coverage and the H20NYC/Healthcare Pioneers evening back in July [TTA 3 July], has moved out of what was a largely private beta to what they interestingly term a ‘public beta’.
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When people are diagnosed with a disease, the first move they, or their family members typically make is to book a long appointment with Dr. Google or WebMD. A New York-based startup named Medivizor thinks they’re making a mistake. Now it will get its shot to prove it.
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Medivizor Makes its Health Information Service Available to the PublicBusiness Wire (by Medivizor) Aug 20, 2013

Helping People with Serious or Chronic Illness Become More Knowledgeable about Their Unique Condition and Treatment Options, and Better Able to Collaborate with Their Doctor. After being accessible to a select group of users by invitation-only, Medivizor™, the innovative health information platform, is now available to the general public (in public beta) with expanded support for medical conditions including lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer, as well as melanoma, diabetes, coronary artery disease, hypertension and stroke.
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Digital Inspiration: e-healthJungle Minds Aug 13, 2013

(original in Dutch - translated by Google translate).
This article is a review of 5 eHealth technologies including Medivizor.
The digitization has led to sweeping changes in the health industry. These developments may also named e-health. For example, self-control through online tools ensures that people can save a visit to the doctor time and costs. In the Netherlands we already see that fewer and fewer people go to the doctor, because they prefer first information about symptoms and diseases up on the internet (source: Gezondheidsnet).
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Are the days of Dr. Google numbered? Today, a range of digital health firms are working on ways to automatically deliver relevant, customized and personalized health content to consumers. These companies are ushering in an era where the act of using a search engine to find health content may become a quaint relic of the past. Learn about the rise of just-in-time health information systems, which promise to transform the way we find and consume health content forever.
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Medivizor - Site Review BellaOnline - The Voice of Women Jul 20, 2013

Who is Medivizor?
Medivizor is a company whose mission is to help patients with serious illnesses such as cancer, and their caregivers, by assimilating credible information gathered from both the internet and from their expert medical professionals, and deliver that relevant information to you, in plain language.
How Medivizor is Different
One search on the internet can yield hundreds of millions of results. And let's face it, we only get fifteen minutes with a doctor, and we always want to know more. We know we're not doctors but when it's our life on the line, we turn over every rock to try to find answers to all the gazillion questions that seem to go unanswered. Cancer patients often suffer from fatigue, and ease-of-use of a medical information site is important to us.
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Radio interview: Medivizor at Digital Health Summer SummitRadioActiveBroadcasting / The Business of Health Jul 06, 2013

Radio interview of Tal Givoly following talk at Digital Health Summer Summit, San Diego - June 13-14, 2013. The program was "The Business of Health". Interviewed by Barbara Beach.
To listen, click "Read full news post", then "Go to the source", and finally click the play button.
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CEWeek 2013/Digital Health Summit
Four floors up, I sat with Tal Givoly, CEO and Oren Fuerst, PhD, Executive Chairman, of startup health information company Medivizor. Their ‘job to be done’ is to personalize the tidal wave of available health information for those with chronic and serious diseases. For this group, the current state is 1) too much information, 2) hard to interpret research and 3) difficult to determine if the information is applicable/relevant/reliable to their chronic condition or disease. By signing up, a patient or family member can receive a customized delivery of the most relevant information, ‘digested’ and interpreted at a 10th grade reading level, for free (and HIPAA compliant).
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Promoting a product or service is not something we normally do on this site, but we thought this service was too cool not tell our community about. For the past month or so, we have been talking to the people at Medivizor about their new tool and offerings for those struggling to find information about colon cancer by turning to web searches and “Dr. Google.”
Medivizor seeks to simplify this generic search and provide customized results based on specific conditions, diagnosis and treatment plans. Then deliver results directly to your inbox, including results of studies available only behind pay walls. Plus, it is free for patients and caregivers.
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It’s hard to keep up with the latest medical information out there, right? I’m sure you can relate to this. Our mom was diagnosed with colon cancer last November, so, naturally, my sister and I wanted to learn everything we could about her medical condition.
We jumped on the Internet to start our research, but it’s really exhausting work, sorting through the morass of information out there, trying to find information that’s relevant, credible and the least bit helpful. And way too much brainpower is wasted trying to figure out what most of it even means.
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PSFK Picks: Top Five Health Innovations of the WeekPSFK Jun 06, 2013

A wristband that reads your mood and a 3D printed ear that could give you super-human hearing.
The most innovative stories from the world of wellness. Each week PSFK.com with its partner Boehringer Ingelheim bring you a snapshot of Five Innovative Ideas that are reshaping the health care industry. This week’s innovations include a wristband that reads your mood and a 3D printed ear that could give you super-human hearing.
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I don’t know about you, but my inbox is bursting at the seams when it comes to emails about any all things diabetes related. I try and keep up, I really do. But I won’t lie to your or me for that matter, and I can’t keep track of all my diabetes emails, especially when it comes to diabetes studies, trials and the latest and greatest in diabetes news, re: breakthroughs, reports, etc. I’ve tried creating different diabetes folders for D studies, trials & news - And that works for a while, until it doesn’t....
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A few months ago, e-Patient Dave wrote a blog post highlighting a new Web property called Medivizor that is fulfilling the personalized health information future we’ve been sketching out for those subscribing to enmoebius bronze, our digital health research and advisory service. We focus on how Big Data, powerful computer programs and other technologies have the potential to transform how people seek health information. Today, when people proactively look for medical content, they start with a search engine like Google. However, we’ve suggested that the day is coming where significant numbers of people will instead rely on technologies that automatically filter and deliver health content for them. This is already happening in the news and information arena. For example, services like Zite leverage personal information people provide regarding their preferences and social connections to find and deliver relevant content.
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Trying to Change the World for the Better: Meet MedivizorHealth Communications and Health Advocacy May 18, 2013

“Medivizor’s vision is to improve the lives of people with serious medical conditions and those who care for them and to effectively apply software and the social web in the field of health for the betterment of humanity. This might sound like a lofty goal, and indeed, it is. We want to change the world for the better!”
As one satisfied patient, AnneMarie Ciccarella has pronounced, “Step Aside Dr. Google: Enter Medivizor.” As the CEO of Medivizor, Tal Givoly describes, “Today, when people become sick, they often use the web to find information. They find too much information. Much of it, irrelevant. Much of it, not easy to understand and interpret. Most frustrating [for them is] finding something that seems hopeful, and wasting precious time with [their] doctor [only] to be disappointed.”
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The internet is increasingly home to reams of information that patients can use to self-diagnose before they contact a health professional, but this wealth of data may either be poorly-researched or may not even be relevant to them. We’ve already seen Cureus try to tackle the first of these issues by placing peer-reviewed papers straight onto the web, and now Israel’s Medivizor is a search tool that offers results personalized to each user.
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One of the most important steps that anyone can take to become an empowered patient or an effective family caregiver is to learn about the condition one is dealing with. Books and online resources abound, but investing time and effort to finding and filtering this wealth of information can be all-consuming. Where do you look for reliable information? Once you find it, can you understand it? Does it apply to your condition? Most of us are not well-versed in the scientific or medical terminology that makes up most of the research papers one comes across on the internet. Would we be able to discuss these reports with our doctors?
Today, Medivizor is taking care of that problem!
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The search for online health information can quickly overwhelm most people. There is so much information available that it often requires users to sort through a maze of websites and medical information which may or may not be relevant. However a new startup aims to change that. Medivizor is a website that helps users sort through all the online health information to deliver relevant medical information.
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New Online Tool Helps Filter Diabetes NewsDiabetesMine Apr 26, 2013

Frankly, we’re always a little skeptical of new “services” that claim to personalize health information, especially when they’re supposed to carry some diabetes management or other health benefit. But hearing how it’s helped at least one fellow PWD makes this new one more credible, in our opinion.
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I typically avoid allowing companies to advertise their wares at robcares.com. However, I do make exceptions if I truly believe that the product or service could be incredibly beneficial to our readers. This is one of those cases.
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Welcome to the Medivizor BlogMedivizor Apr 25, 2013

Today we launch the Medivizor blog. To say we’re excited is an understatement. We’ll be hosting a variety of topics of interest to you, our community, and we welcome your input in this adventure. Here are some ideas of topics we’d like to cover.
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Enter Medivizor, a brand new online service designed to provide easy-to-understand customized information for people with serious medical conditions and for caregivers. With the potential to help others needing easy-to-grasp information, Medivizor is a promising tool and worth being excited about.
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Round-up of Digital Health: Medivizor...ScienceRoll Mar 25, 2013

I’ve recently come across 3 great initiatives in digital health.
Medivizor provides personalized information and updates for people with serious medical conditions.
Also in this round-up: GuidelinesForMe and instaRounds.
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When first diagnosed with cancer, most people turn to the internet in hopes of finding information to better understand their diagnosis and research options for treatment. But finding reliable, relevant information is no easy task. And when you do find such information, it is often challenging and confusing to understand unless you have a medical degree or PhD.
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Medivizor is a startup that culls literature and other resources, including the social web. They select portions relevant to you (based on a questionnaire and your feedback), rephrase it in ordinary language, and send it to you.
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When it comes to researching illnesses and symptoms online, the information age has its advantages and disadvantages. While the internet sometimes allows us to better understand our medical conditions and make informed decisions, it often leads to unnecessary concern, erroneous self-diagnosis and even false hope.
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The New York-based company has developed a personalized content system for people who have been diagnosed with diabetes, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer and breast cancer, or who are caregivers for someone with one of these diseases.
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Step aside, Dr. Google: Enter MedivizorChemoBrain Fog Jan 30, 2013

This is a streamlined website that is clean, uncluttered and easy to use. In less than three minutes, I set up a user name associated with my email account. Then, I answered a few questions about my present health condition and how I got here.
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According to says Tal Givoly, co-founder and CEO of Medivizor, when many people get sick, especially with serious or chronic disease that threatens their lives or their quality of life, they start doing research on the Internet. But how reliable is the information they find? An answer or solution to the problem is the foundation of Medivizor.
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Staying abreast of the latest developments regarding one's disease and finding reliable information is difficult. This startup does the legwork for you.
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Introducing Medivizor – My New Venture!Tal's Blog Nov 13, 2012

It’s been awhile since my last blog post. I apologize, I’ve been busy. I’ve spent most of my time helping several startups get off the ground, some of which you’ll hear more about very soon. Among these, and the one I’ve spent the bulk of my energy on, is Medivizor.
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Startup of the week / Medivizor, your personal medical consultant

Haaretz Jan 01, 2013

“These days, when many people get sick, especially with serious or chronic disease that threatens their lives or their quality of life, they start doing research on the Internet,” says Tal Givoly, co-founder and CEO of Medivizor. But how reliable is the information they find? Enter Medivizor.

Medivizor was created to fill the need for medical information that’s exact, reliable and clear and, most important of all, that meets the user's condition and needs.

“For example, say a person has a certain subtype of a particular cancer. He’s already gone through treatment and things aren’t moving forward the way he’d like," Givoly describes. This is a person who needs very specific information, for instance who the experts are in the field, the medical centers that specialize in his condition, or what are the cutting-edge treatment options available. Such information is almost impossible to find.

The company's premise is that much of the process of searching for information about disease is inefficient. "On the one hand, there’s a lot of information. On the other hand, not all of it is easily accessible, and the existing information isn’t personally suited to the patient," says Oren Fuerst, co-founder and chairman, who has personal experience helping sick family members.

Physicians, such as co-founder Dr. Steven Kaplan, know the problem from the other side – patients come to them armed with piles of paper and information found on Internet. Then the doctors have to spend time weeding through the information and explaining to the patients (and their families) why most of it isn't relevant.

The service is only in English but it will be available in other languages in the future.

Medivizor began with four common diseases: prostate cancer, breast cancer, diabetes and colorectal cancer. Information about other diseases will be added soon, mostly depending onusers’ needs.

Using the website, Medivizor.com, is free.

While many websites offer information about emergency care and contain information about viruses or infections, Medivizor focuses on serious and chronic disease. For example, for those diseases it supports it has information such as the state-of-the-art treatment approach, latest research, clinical trials, and experimental treatments.

To register for the site, the user must answer 10 to 15 questions about the disease he has in order to isolate information relevant to him.

The information that appears on the website is taken from professional scientific journals, among other sources. When new information – a study, article or treatment – is published in the world, it is sent to the user at the frequency he chooses.

Medivizor, which has about 15 employees around the world, mostly comprised of doctors and software developers, was founded in 2011. Besides Givoly, its executive team includes Dr. Oren Fuerst, a serial entrepreneur and investor in the medical equipment, Dr. Steve Kaplan, a urologist and entrepreneur, and Ronen Keinan, its chief operating officer. The company raised its first capital in 2012.

Crowdsourcing also plays a role. “We deal with large quantities of information combined with technology and human knowledge,” Givoly says, adding that the material in the system is checked by experts and is overseen by chief medical officer Dr. Kaplan.

Givoly had served as chief scientist of software giant Amdocs. His decision to leave it for medical entrepreneurship was no trivial matter. “I believe software has endless potential anywhere it's taken. But if there’s any place where technology hasn’t found enough expression yet, it’s healthcare. There, technology can influence our lives and our quality of life for the better much more effectively than anything I’ve experienced yet in the telecommunications or Internet experience,” he says.

Step aside, Dr. Google: Enter Medivizor!

Tal's Blog Feb 04, 2013

That’s not my title! I owe thanks to blogger AnneMarie Ciccarella for that title. You might imagine my thoughts reading it. It blew me away! It was gratifying and exciting, and it’s not just that one title – that’s how it’s been all month with reporters, bloggers, and users as they get exposed to Medivizor and share their thoughts. AnneMarie was among several bloggers (we love you all!) whom have written about us and encouraged their readers to try Medivizor out. As a result, many users requested and received invitations to our early access, signed up, and began using Medivizor.

Here are a few things users have said (publicly) about Medivizor:

I’ve signed up and I really, really like it thus far. This is fantastic! I had largely given up searching for info on my own and just read material recommended by people on FB or on Twitter.

And

I am impressed by the comprehensive content. I have not seen this kind of framework elsewhere (and I’ve spent a lot of time on sites that address breast cancer).

And, even:

I love Medivizor. Thanks to you for providing it…

That’s what has made January such a busy month. I had planned to share with you insights gained from CES 2013 and the Digital Health Summit, which were awesome, but just didn’t get around to it. Hopefully, I’ll get around to it… But the great stuff going on at Medivizor is just so exciting; I couldn’t help but share. It has been great to see people using our services, giving us feedback, getting value, and talking about it.

Where we’re at

Right now, the service is “live” (in invitation-only beta) for 4 medical conditions: breast cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, and colorectal cancer. We’re adding lymphoma and melanoma shortly. Even though we’re in invitation-only mode, people can sign up today and let us know what condition they are interested in and wish us to support next.

It’s very important and gratifying for all of us at Medivizor that we’re able to help people. While we cannot make all people happy, we’re trying our damn best to do so. And mostly, we’re succeeding, even if this sometimes means sleeping 3 hours/night…

Of course, all this couldn’t be done without The (terrific) Medivizor Team supporting it all!

Finally, I’d also like to thank all our early adopters for trying us out, being patient with us, and providing excellent feedback. There’s no doubt that your feedback will improve the service and help you, and others like you.

This is just the start, folks! Lots more to come. Finally, if you know of anybody that might want to try out the service and provide feedback, let them know about it.

Introducing Medivizor – My New Venture!

Tal's Blog Nov 13, 2012

It’s been awhile since my last blog post. I apologize, I’ve been busy. I’ve spent most of my time helping several startups get off the ground, some of which you’ll hear more about very soon. Among these, and the one I’ve spent the bulk of my energy on, is Medivizor. Over the next few weeks and months I’ll be sharing in this blog about the challenges that Medivizor is addressing, the challenges of starting a new company, and some of our experiences.

I’ll begin with a bit of the background. When thinking about what to do next, I had dozens of different ideas and opportunities to consider. In order to help me choose, I had set for myself criteria to evaluate the various opportunities. Two of the most important criteria were:

Whatever I do, it should inspire me and I must be passionate about it.

It had the potential to bring great benefit to the world (I realize it may sound pretentious, but it’s the truth).

The first, is obviously a mandatory criterion, and should be on every entrepreneur’s list – otherwise, it simply wouldn’t attract the attention and perseverance required to achieve it. I needed to firmly believe in the idea, the people, the value it would bring, the potential, and more. In any venture, there are many obstacles, ups, and downs – one must persevere to overcome them. If you don’t believe in the venture and aren’t passionate about it, those obstacles will soon become major barriers.

The second, however, is not on everybody’s list. I did not want to spend my time and energy on doing something that didn’t bring great benefit to people / the world. There were several ideas I ultimately rejected, even though they may have been lucrative. They could have helped some people or organizations, but ultimately, they wouldn’t leave the world in a better state than before. In fact, some even had a net negative impact. So these were rejected. I actually know of a few companies that are very successful, but the overall impact on the world due to their success is negative. I didn’t want to be involved in such efforts.

This quickly brought me to health – this is one area that has tremendous potential for the application of technology, in general, to software and the social web, in particular. In fact, the sky’s the limit. Everywhere I looked, things could be revolutionized or improved dramatically. We are really just at the tip of the iceberg in the application of technology in the area of health.

About Medivizor

So, a bit about Medivizor, which I’ll say much more about later (and you can read more on the web site, www.medivizor.com): Medivizor’s vision is to improve the lives of people with serious medical conditions and those who care for them and to effectively apply software and the social web in the field of health for the betterment of humanity. This might sound a lofty goal, and indeed, it is. We want to change the world for the better!

You may wonder, how are we going to do that? Well, we’re beginning by tackling an important aspect of this: Personalized information updates for people suffering from chronic or serious medical conditions, or those who care for them.

Nowadays, if someone becomes seriously sick (with a chronic, life threatening, or quality of life threatening disease), more often than not, someone becomes a web researcher for any and all information about the medical condition – anything that might help. Sometimes it’s the person that’s sick, but often it’s their parents or another close family member or close friend. However, that process is far from effective or efficient. Quickly, they become inundated with too much information. Most of the information they actually get to, is not relevant for their specific condition. The information is written for scientists and medical professionals, and is very difficult to understand for most people – even well educated smart individuals. They find it difficult to know what to trust and what not to trust. How to interpret the information, which may even be conflicting. Much of the really promising and cutting edge research is published behind “pay walls”. Indeed, the most frustrating experience is when they develop a glimmer of hope that the new information in a research paper they read looks promising. So, they take it to their specialist and the doctor tells them it isn’t relevant because of some minute detail they couldn’t understand from the paper or about their condition.

Medivizor aims to solve all that. I’ll tell you more about how, soon. In the meantime, if you know of someone with a serious medical condition that may benefit from Medivizor, invite them to sign up (for free) to be in our early access program which begins next week (by invitation only).

Interesting new e-patient resource: Medivizor

e-Patient Dave Mar 10, 2013

I get a lot of requests to look at new products, websites, services. If I were rich and retired (or tenured :-)) I’d spend my whole life exploring, but I’m not, so I can’t. This is one, though, that caught my eye, because it proposes to automate something that can normally only be done by peers: filter all the information out there and tell you what’s useful to you.

If this works out, it could become an essential resource for engaging patients and families.

Disclaimer: I haven’t been able to vet the site, testing it as someone with “skin in the game” because the company is currently only handling a few conditions. Also, I’m open to reports of similar products that claim to do what I describe here. This is a description of what interests me, not a final and absolute endorsement.

Okay, enough fine print:

Medivizor is a startup that culls literature and other resources, including the social web. They select portions relevant to you (based on a questionnaire and your feedback), rephrase it in ordinary language, and send it to you. As their site says:

Medivizor aims to fulfill its mission
by providing personalized information updates that arerelevant,understandable, and actionable
for people with serious medical conditions or those who care for them.

Hallelujah! Instead of the often-heard “patients can’t understand this stuff,” they make it: (again from their site)

Relevant – we aim to provide only information that is truly relevant.

Understandable – we provide the information in words most can understand.

Actionable – as much as possible, we’d like to help you identify your possible options.

In my view, that’s what you’d get from a peer (a patient with your condition) or an expert who knows you personally and can speak in your language. That’s important, because if experts can’t convey their expert knowledge to you, in terms you understand, you can’t use it, so you can’t be enabled, so you’re disempowered.

Why that matters:

In the past year some of my speeches have mentioned the field of Human Performance Technology (HPT), which studies the factors that lead to success or failure on the job. If an employee fails to do something they should have, there are many possible causes, for instance

Did they know they had the responsibility to do it?

Did they understand when they’re supposed to do it?

Did they recognize it was time to, in this instance?

Did they have the right instructions to do it?

Did they understand the instructions?

Did they have the physical ability to do it?

Did they know how to recognize when it’s been done correctly?

Get the picture? If the cause of a performance problem is in one factor, it’s a mistake to conclude that it was another – just as wrong as if you treat appendicitis with an elbow bandage. So as medicine seeks to encourage patient engagement – “the most under-used resource” – it’s essential that patients have access to relevant, useful information they can understand.

Of course, there’s vast information out there, more than anyone can keep up with. Their site adds:

We believe that we can solve the ‘needle in the haystack’ challenge. By knowing more about the person who’s sick and their particular condition, our technology can sift through available information and pick out just what’s credible and relevant.

I hope they can do it. And here’s the corker – I hope:

We couple this with insights from our medical team and from information gleaned from the social web

If they can do that successfully (they vet what they find) it’ll be seriously revolutionary, because it’ll be the first service I know that views patient-to-patient discussion as a valid source. (Of course, smart patients know it’s relevant! As I said in my TEDx talk, “Patients know what patients want to know”!)

A lot’s been said about how much IBM Watson will help doctors by gathering vast information. But I have a big concern about how it’s being implemented in medicine – a mortal fear, actually – which Medivizor may solve:

In much-publicized Watson installations at places like Memorial Sloan Kettering, IBM is letting the client put blinders on Watson so it only looks where they tell it to look. I’ve mentioned to some Watson people that I think this is a fatal flaw, because it guarantees that Watson with blinders will never know what patient communities know.

And if Medivizor works out as it might, it could beat Watson at that game. (MSK is a sore point to me, because for whatever reason, they won’t tell kidney cancer patients what patients on ACOR told me: there’s a treatment that usually doesn’t work but sometimes completely banishes the disease – high dosage interleukin-2. (It worked for me.) People who ignore IL-2 should put blinders on Watson???) (This is no slap at MSK’s experts – it’s a big slap at the superstition that the only useful information comes from the usual authorities.)

Who should say what patients (and doctors) get to learn about?

Will we someday see “medical Jeopardy” with Watson against Medivizor?

Better yet, who would be the judge? Informed, engaged patients, perhaps? Ideally, to me, it’ll be a panel of e-patients, empowering clinicians, and open-minded researchers.

Reliable, Relevant Cancer Info Delivered Straight to Your Inbox

CancerHawk Mar 17, 2013

When first diagnosed with cancer, most people turn to the internet in hopes of finding information to better understand their diagnosis and research options for treatment. But finding reliable, relevant information is no easy task. And when you do find such information, it is often challenging and confusing to understand unless you have a medical degree or PhD.

If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with breast cancer, colon cancer or prostate cancer (or a few other health conditions like diabetes), check out Medivizor. Medivizor offers personalized information and updates for people with serious medical conditions. It’s like a google alert but much better. They will be adding more conditions soon- melanoma will soon be launched.

Here’s how it works….

1. Go to Medivizor.com to sign up- all you need is an email address and a diagnosis. BTW, any personal information you provide is not shared without your explicit permission. If you like, even your actual identity does not need to be shared.

2. Because Medivizor recently launched, they only support a limited number of conditions (breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes + a few others). So at this point in time, after you sign up, Medivizorwill confirm with you via email whether they support your condition of interest.

3. If they support your condition, you will then be asked to fill out a brief questionnaire. The more information you provide, the more specific and relevant their findings will be.

4. Next you will begin receiving notifications every few days via email on cutting-edge research, possible treatments, clinical trials and more relevant to your specific condition. BTW, you can list more than one condition if you like. You can also rate each notification or article in terms of it’s relevance to you. The Medivizorsearch engine is smart and will tailor it’s findings based on your feedback.

5. And here’s my favorite part… the information you receive has been re-written in plain English. No medical degree or PhD required to comprehend the articles. Medivizor even bottomline’s the information for you… literally. See a sample article format below. Also included is a link to the actual study which you can print out and bring to your doctor.

6. Lastly, Medivizor‘s personalized information updates is free of charge although over time, they may introduce additional services with associated costs. Got questions? ContactMedivizor @ info@medivizor.com.

SAMPLE ARTICLE I RECEIVED ABOUT COLON CANCER:

In a nutshell
This study tested whether chemotherapy after surgery (‘adjuvant chemotherapy’) including Oxaliplatin and FL (altogether called FOLFOX4) has any benefits in stage II and in elderly patients with colon cancer (CC). The main finding was that the addition of Oxaliplatin to FL as adjuvant chemotherapy did not provide any survival benefit in stage II CC and elderly patients

Some background
Stage II colon cancer (cancer in the large intestine) is confined to the digestive tract. It is usually treated with surgery (removal of the cancer). Adjuvant chemotherapy with Fluorouracil(FU)/Leucovorin(LV) (FL) or Capecitabine alone is standard treatment for stage III CC (cancer that has spread from the colon to the lymph nodes). Oxaliplatin (Eloxatin) is a new FDA approved drug for the treatment of advanced colon cancer. Whether adjuvant chemotherapy has any benefits in stage II and in elderly CC patients remains inconclusive.

Methods & findings
899 patients with stage II CC participated in this study. 315 of them were ages 70-75 years. 569 were regarded as ‘high-risk’ (their tumors had certain features suggesting aggressiveness) whereas 330 were considered as ‘low-risk’. After complete removal of the cancer patients were randomly given either FL or FOLFOX4. Patients were followed-up for 5-7 years. The effect of Oxaliplatin-fortified adjuvant chemotherapy on the following indices was evaluated: Cancer-free survival (the percentage of patients alive without signs and symptoms of the cancer after a specified duration of time); Time to recurrence (time interval until the cancer reappears); Overall survival (the percentage of patients alive with or without the disease).
The addition of Oxaliplatin to adjuvant chemotherapy resulted in higher Cancer-free survival rates and lengthened Time to recurrence in all patients with stage II CC, and particularly in high-risk ones (28% and 38% rise, respectively). The advantage was minor in elderly patients. Either way, the benefit was not statistically significant. Overall survival rate did not improve at all under FOLFOX4 treatment.

The bottom line
In conclusion, the authors did not find a significant benefit from adding Oxaliplatin to FL as adjuvant chemotherapy in stage II CC and elderly patients.

My bottom line…The more knowledgeable a patient, the easier it is to advocate, and patients who advocate for themselves tend to have better outcomes. Medivizor can help make you even MORE knowledgeable about your cancer. So check it out and tell me what YOU think of this FREE service. I can’t wait till they add sarcoma to their list of conditions.

MedCity News Jan 31, 2013

Have you ever had one of those weeks where the stories you read or heard about seemed to follow a pattern? The insights gained from one story feed another and another. This week’s theme has been making information for healthcare professionals, like nurses and physicians, and patients less static and more engaging. I wrote about physicians earlier this week so this one is for patients and it’s called Medivizor.

The New York-based company has developed a personalized content system for people who have been diagnosed with diabetes, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer and breast cancer, or who are caregivers for someone with one of these diseases. It plans to add Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and melaoma next. Users are sent information in a multimedia format tailored to their condition. The goal is to make the information more manageable to allow patients and caregivers to access content that adds value at their own pace.

As anyone looking for information about even the most minor medical condition can attest, there’s a ginormous amount of healthcare content on the Web from medical journals to newspapers and magazines, videos to podcasts. There are also patient portals, LinkedIn groups, clinical trial websites and Facebook pages and much, much more.

The content is geared to a Flesch-Kincaid reading level of 10 to 12 — a high school reading level — so it’s not overly simplistic, but it doesn’t assume you’ve been studying pre-med. Articles and video list the amount of time it will take to read them at this level. Folders organize the content depending on its type. One folder collects clinical trial notices, which are only sent to patients who match the criteria for a particular trial. Anther folder contains summaries and links of relevant patient communities.

At the registration process, users are asked seven to 10 questions about their health: What stage of the disease are you in? Are you pregnant? Breastfeeding? Or are you menopausal? What treatment are you on? What medications are you taking? Do you have any underlying conditions? The layout and text is is minimalist, direct, almost antiseptic. When users click on buttons such as when they “like” an article, a flash of green appears the color of a traffic light.

The executive team is a mix of serial entrepreneurs, medtech veterans and technology management. Oren Fuerst, the executive chairman, is a serial entrepreneur and investor in medtech and serves as managing director of Strategic Models. CEO Tal Givoly previously worked at Amdocs where he was the chief scientist. Dr. Steven Kaplan, its chief medical officer, is a professor of urology and is chief of the Institute of Bladder and Prostate Health at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of the Iris Cantor Men’s Health Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Ronen Keinan, the chief operating officer, previously served as a vice president of portfolio management at Nokia Siemens Networks.

Fuerst said the way the system works is analogous to LinkedIn, where users get notified by email when they have an update and they go online to read it. If the users’ conditions change, they have to update their profiles so they keep getting relevant information.

Whenever something is published from a recognized source like a medical journal it gets sent to the Medivizor site. The team then decides which content is most relevant to which subscribers. “There may be 5,000 research papers per year on prostate cancer, but only 10 are changing the way we look at it,” Keinan says.

The company initially launched the service last year and it’s still in invitation-only mode. It’s fuzzy on details about how it will be monetized and whether the service will be offered by health systems, physicians or through payers. But right now it is free to subscribers and using their professional networks the company is finding a receptive audience. It seems clear that it wants to make people and their caregivers feel like they can better understand their conditions, feel less intimidated in conversations with their healthcare professionals. They can use the information to have a more informed dialogue with their physicians and be better positioned to make informed choices about their care.

Medivizor…Providing Relevant Breast Cancer Information Updates

No Boobs About It... Jan 28, 2013

When most of us get breast cancer, we turn to the Internet and try to find information that will help us understand more about our breast cancer.

We aren’t just looking for information; we are looking for a host of things: reassurance, comfort, and how to get through treatment and get on with life. Surfing the net can be helpful if we are lucky enough to find reputable breast cancer sites and not sites that will only flame our fears about treatment or recurrences. But, even these sites may fall short of what we want and need. Many sites are written for large audiences and will not necessarily give us the answers to our specific breast cancer type, status, and treatment.

So, when I was invited to try out an online service that provides personalized information updates for people with serious medical conditions, such as breast cancer, I accepted. Now in its start up phase, Medivizor was founded by an interdisciplinary team of entrepreneurs with medical and information technology expertise.

Medivizor also asked me to extend an invitation to you, my readers, to experience their service and give feedback on the information you will receive via your email. You will not be inundated with materials, just a few articles every few days.

Ronen Keinan, Chief Operating Officer, describes the work of the new, free service as, “Medivizor provides personalized information updates including cutting edge research, new treatments, clinical trials and more, in a way that can be easily understood and acted upon. In other words, we help people get access to information that is relevant and specific to them by finding ‘the needle in the haystack’.

Often information found on the web is written for scientists and medical professionals, and is very difficult to understand for most people – even those well educated. It’s difficult to know what to trust and how to interpret the information. Much of the really promising and cutting edge research is published behind “pay walls”. Indeed, the most frustrating experience is when one develops a glimmer of hope that the new information in a research paper they read looks promising; they take it to their specialist and the doctor tells them it isn’t relevant because of some minute detail they couldn’t understand from the paper or about their condition. Medivizor aims to solve all that.

Once people sign up for Medivizor, they answer questions to describe themselves and their medical conditions. Medivizor then begins to provide them personalized information updates – suited just for them.

Medivizor is currently in invitation-only early access and supports a few medical conditions, such as breast cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, and colorectal cancer. Soon we will add more conditions.

Anybody willing to check out our service (people either coping with or caring for others), and provide some feedback, can go to medivizor.com and sign up their interest or simply email us at info@medivizor.com, and we’ll invite them as soon as we can.”

Note: I am signed up and receiving relevant information via my email. The videos on breast cancer are very well done.

Medical Service Medivizor Helps Patients Sift Through The Sea Of Online Information

No Camels Mar 10, 2013

When it comes to researching illnesses and symptoms online, the information age has its advantages and disadvantages. While the internet sometimes allows us to better understand our medical conditions and make informed decisions, it often leads to unnecessary concern, erroneous self-diagnosis and even false hope.

“When people get sick, they now become the researcher. They start looking for things that can help them understand the illness,” Tal Givoly, CEO of Israeli startup Medivizor, tells NoCamels. “But there is so much information out there, and finding that which is relevant to you is the challenge. If you do a search on diabetes, you’ll find a hundred million results! A hundred million! It is like finding a needle in a haystack.”

According to Dr. Oren Fuerst, executive chairman of Medivizor, it is not only the patients who suffer from this deluge of information; clinicians have a hard time too. Fuerst says doctors constantly have to deal with patients who believe they know best as a result of doing their own online research.

Referring to the experience of Professor Steve Kaplan, another member of the Medivizor team, Fuerst tells us: “Patients would come to his clinic and say ‘Well I know exactly what I need. I read on Google that XYZ.’ The clinician would reply after reading the material, ‘It is great that you are reading all that stuff, but the research you are showing me relates to a woman in her 50s and you’re a man in your 70s, and the stage of you cancer is slightly different from the one in the reference’ etc.”

Too much information

Fuerst feels that patients have too much information at hand which is often not relevant to them, leading to false hopes. It also becomes a frustrating experience because the clinician has to read through all the material the patient brings in order to find out whether it is relevant.

That’s where Medivizor comes in, by offering relevant information on the latest medical research to patients. Medivizor does this with what it calls a “special mix” of information obtained through crowdsourcing; links with medical experts worldwide and other relevant content providers.

Making the data reachable and understandable

Givoly says this repository of information is not enough, however. The information also has to be comprehensible, he says. “Even if you get the information, how can you understand it? The way it’s written [means that] you have to be an expert in the field to understand it. Knowing English is certainly not enough.”

Medivizor’s solution is to incorporate tests such as the Flesch–Kincaid readability formula to determine how understandable a piece of material is. If the material is not easily understandable, an understandable summary that links to the original material is written up to ensure that the patient knows that there is new scientific material that is relevant to them.

Medivizor users or their loved ones have to fill up a questionnaire so that the systems can recognize their medical condition. Once the questionnaire has been filled, the user can create an account and log in to the Medivizor interface, which is somewhat like a newsfeed. The user then receives updates that are categorized with new pieces of research; explanations about the illness; a notification about a relevant clinical trial, etc.

For now, Medivizor is only available for breast cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer and diabetes, but will soon be adding melanoma and lymphoma to the list. Users can sign up and request to join Medivizor, but registration is currently invite-only, as it is still in the testing phase before full launch.

“Information 85 times more relevant”

According to COO Ronen Keinan, the results so far are highly encouraging. “We’ve got a 85 percent match for relevancy, so [we went] from 99 percent irrelevant [when not using Medivizor] to 85 percent being relevant. And each time someone gets something irrelevant we ask why. We have this small link called ‘helpful’, much like a Facebook ‘like’ and people are actually clicking it and adding comments.”

CEO Givoly sees Medivizor as a means of empowering patients who want to take ownership over their condition. “We try to improve the doctor-patient relationship. Instead of bringing redundant print-outs that are not relevant and wasting the precious 15 minutes you have with your specialist, you send them in advance one article that is very relevant. That way the doctor is very aware of what is happening before meeting you and you don’t need to surprise tem. It is all very professional.”

According to the company, Medivizor has also received positive feedback from doctors who value the relevant research that patients point them to. In Fuerst’s words: “The patient can surprise the doctor with the latest and greatest, that the doctor simply didn’t have time to read.”

“80 percent of healthcare spending is on Services”

Medvision is currently debating different revenue streams. “If you look at healthcare spending worldwide, it is roughly 10 percent of the GDP in every country. In the US it is more than 17 percent and in Europe, around 8 percent depending on the country,” Dr Fuerst points out. “80 percent [of the spending] is on services, [and not] on the pharmaceutical industry. So by bringing a focal point for people involved in that service, the patients and the caregivers, we believe we can create value.”

One possible revenue stream, Fuerst says, is matching clinical trials of relevance to Medivizor patients. According to Fuerst, “it’s known in the pharmaceutical industry, in the medical devices industry, that one of the main inhibitors of drugs entering the market is the [difficulty] of recruiting patients for clinical trials.” He stresses that everything will be done with the permission of the patient and that patient privacy is of the utmost importance.

At this stage, adds Fuerst, Medivizor is focused on its goal of providing relevant medical information for the patient and not on recruiting people for clinical trials.

Step aside, Dr. Google: Enter Medivizor

ChemoBrain Fog Jan 30, 2013

We've all done it. We all DO it. We've undoubtedly all been ADMONISHED by at least one good friend. Don't.Do.It.

Something isn't quite right. I can recall a summer afternoon not so long ago when I tripped or slipped or lost my balance. It didn't happen once. It wasn't twice. It was the third time that send me over the edge. In the first place, I'm lucky my wrist didn't snap like a toothpick. Mostly, I was petrified. I was standing and then I was on the ground. No dizziness. No blackout. Nothing. Just standing and then down.

Instinctively, I grabbed the phone to call my "talk me off the ledge" buddy. When she jumped into advocacy mode and started talking brain MRI, I very lovingly assaulted her with a barrage of curses that would have made my very colorful grandmother quite proud. She's a great friend. She knew to back right off and just hand hold. "Ok, so we won't schedule an MRI."

In the next sentence, she began talking about a spa. I want to return to Miraval. I'm more of a sea person, but the mountains in Tucson were captivating and the grounds are serene. Plus, I have visions of that zipline. The conversation began to sound a bit bucket-list-ish and my dear buddy may have heard a change in the tone of my voice. Or, she may have heard me pecking on the keyboard.

"AnneMarie, Get OFF THE INTERNET." Voice slightly louder, "Are you listening to me? There is nothing wrong with you. Shut the laptop RIGHT this second!" I see you all nodding in agreement. You KNOW exactly what I mean.

Enter: Dr. Google.

And suddenly, things begin to get a bit dicey. I use the internet responsibly. Unless I'm having a twitter war, which, incidentally, happened last night and I'm still a bit stunned. Another day. Let's just say that I may **think** I know it all, but I **know** that others know their all, too. I don't impose my will on others and I will never understand how a person can barge into a conversation with a comment and then begin to make remarks that are haughty and utterly ridiculous. I have about as much patience for comments that fly in the face of logic as I have for those splashy headlines.

I'm way off point. And yes, there is a point and it's a rather important point. I was introduced to a new website within the past two weeks. Here is where I would normally go check my email account to nail down exactly when I first learned of the site because minutiae is what I seem to do best these days but I'm refraining/restraining myself.

This is big picture and I'm quite impressed with this big picture and I'm even more impressed by this website. Medivizor. There are endless resources on the internet to find medical information. Used responsibly, the power of the most brilliant minds is at our virtual fingertips. Breast cancer? A quick google search for "breast cancer information" yields 220 MILLION hits in two tenths of a second.

That's GREAT stuff but seriously??? How can anyone be expected to sort through that much information? How much of it is pertinent to my needs? Is it outdated? Is it some crazy blogger with a mushy brain who can't get out of her own way? Is it some researcher at, oh, I don't know, Duke University trying to sell me on some skewed information based upon observations of women treated over twenty years ago? FYI, in medical years..... telling us about what happened 20 years ago in medicine is akin to deciphering the etchings of a caveman. Just sayin'

I was intrigued and I decided to take it for a test run. Or two. This is a streamlined website that is clean, uncluttered and easy to use. In less than three minutes, I set up a user name associated with my email account. Then, I answered a few questions about my present health condition and how I got here.

I was diagnosed with invasive lobular breast cancer in 2006. I had a bilateral radical mastectomy with reconstruction. I did chemotherapy and I am presently on hormone therapy. I am currently NED. My chemotherapy drugs were cytoxan, methotrexate and fluorouracil. My hormone therapy is femara. I don't take anything else. Except an occasional anxiety medication when, for example, someone tells me that breast cancer treatment is not evidence based, it's "consensus based" or when a medical journal screams that lumpectomy saves lives. (It's the bit of Sicilian blood infused into my veins from my mom... can't help it..... I'll let it go now....)

Obviously, I'm not altogether too concerned with HIPAA having just outed my medical history in this very public space. The point .... Medivizor has MY unique health information. Except they don't know it's ME. They ARE concerned with HIPAA and my privacy (a lesson I might want to learn one day?). They only know my user name and the email address I gave them. What happens next? I receive notifications. THEY troll through the 220 million hits and THEY find the items that are recent and relevant to MY life. It's a personal relationship.

Medivizor and me.

An email notification that there are articles that I may find pertinent directs me to my page where I can read the article. No splashy headlines. Just facts. Medical facts. From real medical journals. I can highlight sections that I find to be of particular interest, make notes on what looks like a post-it and let them know if the article was helpful, or not..... and this is just the beginning.

The site is brand new. There are plans to include matches to clinical trials. Clinical trials save lives. They advance research. Part of how I came to this point in my life is because of my involvement with Love/Avon Army of Women. A quick glance at clinicaltrials.gov tells me there are almost 140,000 trials in every state and in 182 countries. I'm anxious to see the clinical trials function rolled out. Research matters. As an advocate, I like to see what in the pipeline. As a patient with a semi-fried brain, I'd love to see some solution oriented trials nudge my brain back to something just a bit more organized.

I'm impressed. And they've barely scratched the surface. I can see endless possibilities. I've signed up as an "early adopter" and I hope you will consider joining me. This is not just for the breast cancer crowd. As of today, in addition to breast cancer, the invitation is also extended to those dealing with prostate cancer, colorectal cancer or diabetes. Melanoma is right around the corner.

I see my friend, Jean Campbell at No Boobs About It is as delighted as I am with her experience on the Medivizor site. You can read what she has to say, you should read what she has to say. And then, I would say, just do it.....

Click the link and request an invitation. Sit back, relax and watch the information begin to flow. No worries about inundation of information or inbox overflow. They got this. It's measured and controlled and for me, this has a Wow Factor on a scale of one to ten? An eleven. Easily. Eleven.

And did I mention? I'm impressed.

Note to mom: Medivizor has your back, too. I said I took it out for a test run or two. I decided to challenge them with two diagnoses. Stellar. Positively stellar.

Medivizor aims to improve the accuracy of medical information

STARTUPress Jan 04, 2013

According to says Tal Givoly, co-founder and CEO of Medivizor, when many people get sick, especially with serious or chronic disease that threatens their lives or their quality of life, they start doing research on the Internet. But how reliable is the information they find? An answer or solution to the problem is the foundation of Medivizor

The inception of Medivizor was with the aim to fill the need for medical information that’s exact, reliable and clear and, most important of all, that meets the user’s condition and needs.

“For example, say a person has a certain subtype of a particular cancer. He’s already gone through treatment and things aren’t moving forward the way he’d like,” Givoly describes. This is a person who needs very specific information, for instance who the experts are in the field, the medical centers that specialize in his condition, or what are the cutting-edge treatment options available. Such information is almost impossible to find.

The company’s premise is that much of the process of searching for information about disease is inefficient. “On the one hand, there’s a lot of information. On the other hand, not all of it is easily accessible, and the existing information isn’t personally suited to the patient,” says Oren Fuerst, co-founder and chairman, who has personal experience helping sick family members.

Physicians, such as co-founder Dr. Steven Kaplan, know the problem from the other side – patients come to them armed with piles of paper and information found on Internet. Then the doctors have to spend time weeding through the information and explaining to the patients (and their families) why most of it isn’t relevant.

The service is only in English but it will be available in other languages in the future.

Medivizor began with four common diseases: prostate cancer, breast cancer, diabetes and colorectal cancer. Information about other diseases will be added soon, mostly depending onusers’ needs.

Using the website, Medivizor.com, is free.

While many websites offer information about emergency care and contain information about viruses or infections, Medivizor focuses on serious and chronic disease. For example, for those diseases it supports it has information such as the state-of-the-art treatment approach, latest research, clinical trials, and experimental treatments.

To register for the site, the user must answer 10 to 15 questions about the disease he has in order to isolate information relevant to him.

The information that appears on the website is taken from professional scientific journals, among other sources. When new information – a study, article or treatment – is published in the world, it is sent to the user at the frequency he chooses.

Medivizor, which has about 15 employees around the world, mostly comprised of doctors and software developers, was founded in 2011. Besides Givoly, its executive team includes Dr. Oren Fuerst, a serial entrepreneur and investor in the medical equipment, Dr. Steve Kaplan, a urologist and entrepreneur, and Ronen Keinan, its chief operating officer. The company raised its first capital in 2012.

Crowdsourcing also plays a role. “We deal with large quantities of information combined with technology and human knowledge,” Givoly says, adding that the material in the system is checked by experts and is overseen by chief medical officer Dr. Kaplan.

Givoly had served as chief scientist of software giant Amdocs. His decision to leave it for medical entrepreneurship was no trivial matter. “I believe software has endless potential anywhere it’s taken. But if there’s any place where technology hasn’t found enough expression yet, it’s healthcare. There, technology can influence our lives and our quality of life for the better much more effectively than anything I’ve experienced yet in the telecommunications or Internet experience,” he says.

Medivizor: A New, Easy Tool at Your Fingertips

Beth Gainer Apr 24, 2013

Many grappling with a serious medical condition have done it. I know I have.

From the convenience of my home, I’ve let my fingers do the walking – through the Internet. And my payoff: Being bombarded with a gazillion facts and opinions, some rather depressing.

Oh, and a few information-overload panic attacks.

Overwhelming? Absolutely.

Enter Medivizor, a brand new online service designed to provide easy-to-understand customized information for people with serious medical conditions and for caregivers. One of the missions of Medivizor, according to its web site, is to “Improve the lives of people with serious medical conditions and of those who care for them.”

Still in its infancy, this online tool provides information on a handful of diseases for now such as colon cancer, diabetes, and breast cancer. It will be exciting to see when it covers many more conditions. This service has great potential to provide a vast array of information – customized based on the user’s medical information.

And eventually, there will be a link to applicable clinical trials.

Exciting, indeed.

Medivizor is easy to navigate. You first enter personal information so the system can find custom information regarding your particular condition. Medivizor just asks you to identify yourself through an e-mail you give them and a “nickname,” not your entire name.

Your Personal Space

Once you’re done entering preliminary information about your condition, you enter the area called Your Personal Space, where you will find research articles that may be useful to you, as they are based on your particular condition. The articles are from medical journals. Next to the actual article is a summary of the article for the lay reader who does not want to navigate through a journal article or for the reader who might then want to read that article. (Note: Some articles are free, while others can be purchased from the publisher directly.)

Next to the journal-article summary is a box where you can jot down notes. A Share With Doctor option allows you to e-mail it to your progressive medical team doctor and to comment or ask any relevant questions.

When Medivizor finds journal articles believed to be pertinent to your condition, it notifies you via e-mail. It’s as simple as that.

I signed up as an “early adopter,” as you need to put in an early adopter request for the service to invite you.

New Caregiver Resource: Personalized Medical Information

Rob Cares Apr 25, 2013

I typically avoid allowing companies to advertise their wares at robcares.com. However, I do make exceptions if I truly believe that the product or service could be incredibly beneficial to our readers. This is one of those cases.

Two individuals that I greatly admire and respect, especially for the lengths they go to prior to endorsing a product, are big fans of this organization. If they are endorsing it, then it was worthwhile for me to explore its contents as well.

So, with that in mind, I hope you find this article and the service this organization provides to be of value. It could save time and energy in your medical journey. As a caregiver, we need to be connected to the best information available for our loved one’s specific medical malady. This site could be invaluable in that regard.

Rob

These days, whenever someone becomes seriously sick, very often, someone becomes a “web researcher.” In many cases, the researcher role falls on the shoulders of the caregiver caring for a parent, spouse, child, or close friend. This could happen for many reasons, but it happens nevertheless.

The caregiver often goes to great lengths or even does everything he or she can to look forthe best medical center or doctor, learn about and research the various treatment options, try to discover and understand the cutting-edge research, seek potential clinical trials that may be suitable, find other people or organizations that could be of assistance, find any advice or tips, and much more.

The Internet Is Full of Information

While the internet is an amazing tool and has vast amounts of information, the whole process of finding the right trustworthy information suitable for the specific loved one is still ineffective and inefficient. When searching for the person’s medical condition or symptoms, one ends up with thousands or even millions of results, most of which are not relevant to the specific case. The results are not clear what is most current and trustworthy. Much of the material is in language beyond the reach of a typical reader. None of it is personalized to a caregiver’s specific situation. It is nearly impossible to continue to stay abreast of the latest developments over time.

Two people with the same general medical condition, such as diabetes, can vary widely in the sort of treatment that they would receive. An active Type-1 diabetic teenager and a 90-year old Type-2 non-insulin-dependent diabetic would have very different treatments. This is true, in general.

Broadly speaking, most, if not all, of the medical information available today on the web is generic and not personalized to the individual case.

Medivizor, a new medical information service available to caregivers and care recipients, is focused on solving this specific problem by providing personally relevant medical information. If Medivizor knows enough about the person that’s coping with illness, it can present just the relevant medical and health information that is relevant to that person, and no more. Rather than offering thousands of results, Medivizor provides just information for the specific case. This information could be the latest cutting-edge research, relevant treatment options, or even a matching clinical trial.

A service like Medivizor, used by the caregiver, allows the caregiver to always stay abreast of the latest developments or breakthroughs in the science or medicine. Medivizor is focused on serious or chronic illnesses – not your common cold.

ScienceRoll’s Dr. Bertalan Meskó (@berci) recently included Medivizor in his round up of cool digital health.

The service is still in early development and is currently in invitation-only, early-access mode. It is gradually expanding the list of supported medical conditions. Today, it already supports prostate, breast, and colorectal cancer, melanoma, and diabetes. However, anybody can head over to Medivizor and sign up with their interest and indicate the primary medical condition for which they are interested. If that medical condition is supported, they will be invited to join soon.

Welcome to the Medivizor Blog

Medivizor Apr 25, 2013

Today we launch the Medivizor blog. To say we’re excited is an understatement. We’ll be hosting a variety of topics of interest to you, our community, and we welcome your input in this adventure. Here are some ideas of topics we’d like to cover. What do you think?

ePatient / Smart patient.

You and your Medical Team: Bringing up new information.

Clinical trials: What are they? Should I participate?

The numbers game: What does incidence, prevalence and other mathematical jargon really mean?

Weighing new information in decision making

Domain specific:

The meaning of interesting new science and discoveries.

Coping with serious or chronic medical conditions.

Caregiving—Common Interests.

“Behind the scenes” at Medivizor:

Building a health-tech startup.

News and updates from Medivizor.

Do you want to contribute to the blog? What other topics are you interested in? Comment or email us at blog@medivizor.com. We want to hear from you! We appreciate your comments. Be sure to share Medivizor with your friends, family, colleagues, followers–you get the idea—sharing is caring.

DISCLAIMER: It must be clear that this blog should not be considered medical advice. Although hosted by Medivizor, the opinions presented are those of the writers, not necessarily of Medivizor.

New Online Tool Helps Filter Diabetes News

DiabetesMine Apr 26, 2013

Having lived with type 1 for close to four decades now, Gina Gaudefroy has seen her share of news stories and articles about the latest research and technology relating to diabetes.

She was diagnosed at age 12 when living in Ireland, back in a time that many of us refer to as “the dark ages of diabetes.” Her sister also has diabetes, and her 21-year-old son Sean-Michael was diagnosed about four years ago.

So with all that personal and D-Mom experience under her belt, you might see her as a “certified diabetes web surfer” of sorts. Yet someone who still found herself feeling helpless, buried in all kinds of information that was really repetitive and not suited to what she was specifically interested in learning.

That’s why Gina, who now lives in Santa Barbara, CA, was so excited to find a personalized web service called Medivizor to help her weed through all the news and articles.

Medivizor launched in late 2012, with creators describing the service as solving the “needle in the haystack” challenge, sifting through loads of info to pick out what you want specifically. That can be anything from info on cutting-edge research, clinical trials, new treatments, medical institutions, experts, or really anything else that someone’s preferences may dictate.

Frankly, we’re always a little skeptical of new “services” that claim to personalize health information, especially when they’re supposed to carry some diabetes management or other health benefit. But hearing how it’s helped at least one fellow PWD makes this new one more credible, in our opinion.

Medivizor is the creation of a 2011-founded Israeli startup that has offices in Nevada and now has about 15 employees around the world, mostly doctors and software developers. One of the execs is a name we’ve mentioned before: Oren Fuerst, co-founder and chairman, who also serves as CEO of the young Delaware-based startup LabStyle Innovations that’s created the Dario meter.

Here’s how Medivizor works:

Once you set up a free account online, you’re prompted to answer 10 to 15 questions about the disease you have in order to isolate information relevant to you. That creates a profile and takes you to a “personal space” page that resembles an Inbox, made up of various filters and views for you to use in sorting through the info that appears. You can open up articles to read, star them, take notes, and easily share your finds through social media.

The information the service provides is gathered from professional scientific journals, among other sources. You can set up your preferences to send email notifications when new articles or information about studies or treatments on your selected illness are published.

Chief Operating Officer Ronen Keinan tells us that Medivizor is different from other “personalized information” sources because it uses patent-pending technology to sort through everything to find the most credible, relevant information and then make it reader-friendly.

Basically, the company’s technology uses an algorithm to find very specific information and then the Medivizor medical team, split up by condition, “challenges” that information through their own review and approves the results. Keinan says the process ensures quality and also helps improve the algorithm, and so far they’re hearing back from users that 85% of the items are being described as “relevant” to people. Users can also offer written feedback on the items they receive, which Keinan says goes back to the medical team and helps improve the system.

At this early stage, the core service of personalized updates is free. But Medivizor may introduce other services that have a cost, Keinan says. Future possibilities include advertising to help support the free services, and the company may look at third-party partnerships (“bundling” with other subscription services) to collect revenue. No decisions on the business model have been made yet, it appears.

Right now, Medivizor only supports a few medical conditions including diabetes, and breast, prostate, skin, and colorectal cancers. But it plans to expand gradually to include more conditions. While Keinan wouldn’t tell us how many total users or how many requesting diabetes info are using Medivizor, he says that PWD users seem to be “rather active” and the most vocal of the patient conditions at this time (!)

As Gina tells it, Medivizor provided her with “some clear refresher information about diabetes that I really needed to be reminded about. I get caught up in the hype for a cure, so I’m always looking at the newest clinical trials and that kind of information.”

Some of the best resources Gina’s received includes information on the varying genetics of type 1 diabetes, nocturnal hypoglycemia being so common in children, immune therapy, and an article about the major role of glucagon in diabetes.

Gina might seem like a spokesperson for Medivizor, but that’s not the case – she’s just a PWD consumer like the rest of us, who’s also active in advocacy. In her professional life, Gina works as a consultant grant writer for non-profit organizations. She’s also involved in the Sanofi-sponsored A1C Champions program as a motivational speaker, and she helped create the “Central Coast Council,” a JDRF-affiliated group for PWDs living on the Central Coast of California.

“I’ve lived with diabetes for so long that I took it for granted that I knew or remembered all this essential information,” she tells us. “It’s refreshing to receive clear, accurate and easy to read information which pertains to my diabetes.”

Really, the service sounds like peer-to-peer recommended information and that’s a valuable type of resource to have. Aside from Gina, breast cancer survivor/blogger AnneMarie Ciccarella has also given Medivizor a glowing review, gushing:

“THEY troll through the 220 million hits and THEY find the items that are recent and relevant to MY life. It’s a personal relationship. Medivizor and me. An email notification that there are articles that I may find pertinent directs me to my page where I can read the article. No splashy headlines. Just facts. Medical facts. From real medical journals. I can highlight sections that I find to be of particular interest, make notes on what looks like a post-it and let them know if the article was helpful, or not….. and this is just the beginning.”

Here’s Medivizor’s promotional video explaining the value they offer:

Will Medivizor be the next big thing for finding information about medical conditions — replacing “Dr. Google” that’s so often the first place new patients turn to when finding out about a new health issue? Maybe. Maybe not…

But from these early endorsements, especially that of a respected fellow D-peep, we’re at least encouraged that this service could be of help.

Helping users filter out online health information

World of DTC Marketing Apr 29, 2013

The search for online health information can quickly overwhelm most people. There is so much information available that it often requires users to sort through a maze of websites and medical information which may or may not be relevant. However a new startup aims to change that. Medivizor is a website that helps users sort through all the online health information to deliver relevant medical information. Medivizor is the first company to provide truly personalized information and updates for people with serious medical conditions. It is founded and supported by doctors’ medical expertise and an interdisciplinary team of entrepreneurs with IT expertise. Will they succeed ? It depends on whether users find their service valuable but more importantly if they can stay on top of new medical information.

Currently Medivizor is by “invitation only” which is not good news for patients. People want health information at THEIR convenience and are not likely to go back to a website that is not 100% up and running. The other challenge is to ensure that the medical information they have is relevant and that they are allowed to use ALL the information available to patients from ALL health websites. Some websites, for example, may not want their content repurposed on another site. However the idea is sound.I always though that Google should offer a special search option for health information removing the SPAM sites that so many people try to avoid but over the past few years Google has improved the user experience. That alone is a challenge for Medivizor as a majority of people (close to 80%) start their search for health information with a search engine. The other challenge is getting people to come back to the site. Will, for example, people want to stay abreast of health information around conditions like high blood pressure or high cholesterol ? It has been my experience through research with patients that they only search for health information at specific times within the healthcare transaction model. There are some people though that want to stay on top of health information effecting them, Type one diabetics have a strong online presence and sense of community.

Time will tell if Medivizor is successful. While a lot of startups sound like good ideas they often don’t have the money or time to conduct in-depth research and usability studies that can lead to a successful website.

Medivizor: personalized medical information at your fingertips

Caregiving Cafe May 03, 2013

One of the most important steps that anyone can take to become an empowered patient or an effective family caregiver is to learn about the condition one is dealing with. Books and online resources abound, but investing time and effort to finding and filtering this wealth of information can be all-consuming. Where do you look for reliable information? Once you find it, can you understand it? Does it apply to your condition? Most of us are not well-versed in the scientific or medical terminology that makes up most of the research papers one comes across on the internet. Would we be able to discuss these reports with our doctors?

My husband (the patient) and I (his caregiver now and previously, a long-distance caregiver for my father) spent many many days searching for information on CRPS, multiple myeloma, medications used to treat both of these extremely rare diseases, therapists, nutrition, etc. When we were already focusing our energy on adjusting to a new way of life and coping with the emotions that surface as our loved ones face deteriorating health…and worse, searching without any guarantee of fruitful results was a frustrating and tiresome task.

Today, Medivizor is taking care of that problem!

“Medivizor’s vision is to improve the lives of people with serious or chronic medical conditions and those who care for them. We aim to fulfill our mission by providing personalized information updates that are relevant, understandable, and actionable.”

In a nutshell, Medivizor will gather and deliver information that applies to your particular medical condition, provides it in a language that most people can understand and presents options for you to consider.

The process is really quite simple:

- Sign up for your private and free account

- Answer several questions about your condition or that of your caree

- Choose how often you want to receive information and updates

- Medivizor will send you an email to let you know that new information, relevant to your condition, is waiting for you. You will receive a few items at first, so that you are not bombarded by articles. Depending on how often and how much you read, Medivizor will send you updates accordingly.

- You will have access to the original article as well as to a summary, a “bottom line” and a version of the article in “plain English.”

- Currently, Medivizor is in invitation-only mode, supporting the following conditions: breast cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, melanoma, and diabetes. They plan to gradually add more medical conditions while maintaining the highest standard of service.

My empowered patient, my husband, who is a retired scientist and spent much of his working life involved in research, is excited – and grateful – for Medivizor’s service. CRPS is painful and exhausting, so having someone else curate the scientific information for him so that he can stay abreast of the latest news spares him long and arduous episodes at the computer. Likewise, many other conditions make it difficult for patients to conduct their own research as a result of mobility or cognitive issues. Medivizor resolves that!

For family caregivers, Medivizor is a practical tool that will save many hours of searching and deciphering. Truly, this is a service that all caregivers must put into use. The information delivered to them can then be discussed with their caree’s doctor to make sure that no possible treatment has been overlooked. This includes clinical trials, which can immensely benefit not only the patient, but all people across many conditions.

Medivizor puts personalized medical information at your fingertips so that you can make better decisions about your care!

Search tool offers medical information personalized to each user

Springwise.com May 17, 2013

Medivizor helps patients find medical information that is relevant to them by tailoring results to each user.

The internet is increasingly home to reams of information that patients can use to self-diagnose before they contact a health professional, but this wealth of data may either be poorly-researched or may not even be relevant to them. We’ve already seen Cureus try to tackle the first of these issues by placing peer-reviewed papers straight onto the web, and now Israel’s Medivizor is a search tool that offers results personalized to each user.

Currently open to those looking for information on breast cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, colorectal cancer, and melanoma, Medivizor users first sign up and enter details about themselves and their condition – or those of the person they’re caring for. The service then delivers relevant news and updates that may help them learn more about their condition and what it means for them. The research on the site is curated based on quality, ease of comprehension and whether it includes actionable options for patients to pursue. Medivizor doesn’t aim to do away with professional opinion, but instead empowers patients to do their own reliable research they can then share with their doctors. The following video explains more about the concept:

Medivizor is currently invitation-only and hopes to expand to include other conditions in the near future. When it comes to serious medical illnesses, how else can patients ensure the information they find on the web is accurate?

Trying to Change the World for the Better: Meet Medivizor

Health Communications and Health Advocacy May 18, 2013

“Medivizor’s vision is to improve the lives of people with serious medical conditions and those who care for them and to effectively apply software and the social web in the field of health for the betterment of humanity. This might sound like a lofty goal, and indeed, it is. We want to change the world for the better!”

As one satisfied patient, AnneMarie Ciccarella has pronounced, “Step Aside Dr. Google: Enter Medivizor.” As the CEO of Medivizor, Tal Givoly describes, “Today, when people become sick, they often use the web to find information. They find too much information. Much of it, irrelevant. Much of it, not easy to understand and interpret. Most frustrating [for them is] finding something that seems hopeful, and wasting precious time with [their] doctor [only] to be disappointed.”

Within this dilemma, is Medivizor’s purpose. Medivizor provides medical and health information, vetted by physicians, to subscribers. That information is personalized to their specific diagnosis and delivered to them on an ongoing basis. Medivizor takes the futility out of the web search.

And the best part about it: It’s a free service.

“It’s a subscription service. You sign up once, begin getting information from then on. That’s another key attribute,” relates COO Ronen Keinan. Right now, the service supports breast cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, melanoma, and diabetes and is adding more diagnoses as they grow. Even if the service doesn’t support your diagnosis now, “You can sign up now and put in your primary medical condition – and we’ll let you know when we add support for it,” Mr. Givoly states.

The first question you might ask is, “How are they doing this?”

“We have a medical staff that’s overseen by our Chief Medical Officer. Some review is automated and some human–physicians and PhD’s–that do peer-reviews, ” Mr. Givoly states. Medivizor relies on content from PubMed. ”We strive to provide ONLY relevant information in words most can understand and act upon….The information is intended to provide value to the patient and or caregiver (and medical team). We develop a medical profile for the individual. Then we semantically match new information according to that meta-data,” Mr. Givoly explains.

The health information provided is explanations of cutting-edge medical and scientific research, notifications of matching clinical trials, lifestyle tips, community resources, and relevant treatment options. “Decisions of whether to include content is a medical team decision that gauges level of evidence and user interest ,” Mr. Keinan says.

As Ms Ciccarella states, “A big part for me? It’s interactive. I let them know if information is helpful or not and why.” And Medivizor responds to feedback.

Medivizor’s formative team includes Tal Givoly, Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Givoly was Chief Scientist of Amdocs (DOX), where he headed up innovation activities across the $3B company. Before that he held leadership positions in product management, software and product development. Ronen Keinan is their Chief Operating Officer. Keinan has 20 year of experience in high-tech and was most recently the Vice President of Portfolio Management at Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN). Oren Fuerst, Ph.D., Chairman of the Board, is a seasoned entrepreneur, investor, and author. Dr. Fuerst built, and continues to lead a number of companies focusing on medical devices and health informatics. Prof. Steven Kaplan (MD) is the Chief Medical Officer. He is Chief of the Institute of Bladder and Prostate Health at Weill Cornell Medical College and also serves as Director of the Iris Cantor Men’s Health Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

The motivation for starting Medivizor comes from life experiences of its founders. ”Each of the founders had a personal perspective and they knew each other over time and came together. For example, Oren Fuerst was a caregiver for his mother’s cancer and experienced the information problem first hand. Even though he was very knowledgeable and well-connected, it was just overwhelming and impossible to keep track.” Mr. Givoly relates. ”Prof. Kaplan, a world-renowned doctor and researcher, has people coming in every day with irrelevant Google printouts. And I saw good friends cope with their young child’s leukemia and what they had to go through in terms of medical research. We got together and built the product/service/team to solve the big problem: That medical information isn’t personalized. That despite the enormous amount of information, finding ‘the right stuff’ is simply ineffective and inefficient.”

At this point, the start-up is a labor of love. They are searching for ways to keep the service going but they are certain of one thing, “Medivizor is not intended for marketing,” Mr. Givoly states. ”There’s a lot of great information on web and a lot of marketing. Medivizor is not intended for marketing.” The founders are using three models to obtain some return on investment, first, “premium services to be introduced in future, second, licensing of software to medical professionals and third, referrals (clinical trials, treatment, etc.). But, business is not determining the information that is provided,” Mr. Givoly reiterates.

“What we provide is unique in many ways. First, is that it is truly personal: The user doesn’t “search” for information; they get information just relevant for them. We know enough about the person to do so. We sift through all the information and find what’s relevant, couple this with our medical team insights and the social web (crowdsourcing). We are HIPAA compliant and safeguard user data!” Mr. Keinan states.

“When I went to sign up,” says Summer Plum, a patient subscriber. “It immediately recognized Ehlers-Danlos (a rare genetic disorder characterized by extremely loose joints, fragile or stretchy skin, a genetic disorder) which is novel and nice.” Ms. Ciccarella notes, “I use it for me and for my mom with metastatic breast cancer. It’s useful and helpful. I am thrilled with the site…. “

Making the content of journal articles accessible to everyone is a challenge. ”We aim for 10th grade English. We may personalize based on literacy in future. We take it down from, literally, Flesch-Kincaid grade levels of 18-22 down to 10. That’s a gap.” To deal with this difficulty, they have added a “help box.” Ms. Ciccarella remarks, ”There is a “helpful” box to interact back.. .if enough people said, ‘HUH?’ they would rewrite and resend information. I have returned questions in the “helpful” box …. and got back a clarification of the information.”

“We intend it to be suitable for both the e-Patient and the average person. The balance is delicate, I admit. ” Mr. Givoly states. “However, data we’ve seen suggests that it does include ~90% of US adults.”

The company has a long list of conditions they are working to add. ”We’d like anybody coping with a serious or chronic medical condition to add Medivizor to their tools. We believe strongly in being smart/engaged patients. Medivizor can help save time/effort and focus medical information checking. Medivizor provides you info and ongoing updates specifically for your situation, as new things become available. If you want to know when we support a condition of interest… You can sign up and put in that primary medical condition – and we’ll let you know when we add support for it,” Mr. Givoly adds.

“I can only say one thing: It’s not the same as anything out there. Clean interface and ongoing information.” says Ms. Ciccarella. Dr. Gia Sison, a physician recently turned breast cancer patient agrees, “Once people try it, you truly appreciate its usefulness! Just signed up. Nice website and easy to understand both from a doctor/patient point of view.”

Patients can use the information and resources they receive from Medivizor to collaborate with their local primary care physicians. However, Medivizor doesn’t provide medical advice, nor does it replace a person’s medical team – it supports it. Users can simply share what they get in Medivizor directly with the ‘share with doctor’ feature.

Ms. Plum says, “ It does take an immense amount of personal knowledge to be able to sort through all the information available [on the web]. ” Mr. Givoly agrees, ” That’s one of the challenges we try to address: Simply what you need to know….We try to package that and we try to help build on knowledge. Provide general knowledge and then become more specific. So it’s gradual.

Dr. Sison agrees, “In this world of medical information overload on the net it’s vital to have a one-stop hub for all (healthcare professionals/patients).” Ms. Ciccarella states, “The site is FOR patients. Helps us be better members of our medical teams. We can ask the right questions and make best use of doctor’s time.”

”We strive to provide as much transparency as we can. Our mission is truly to make the world a better place by applying software and the social web for the betterment of humanity. We take great care to protect our user’s data and privacy. We do not share personal information with others without explicit consent of the users. Best scientific evidence is always the prime consideration when sharing information with users. If there are controversial matters – we coach to reflect that. If anything is ever sponsored, we would, obviously, make it very plain to see that. Bottom line – we are trying to do good and avoid tarnishing our reputation. “

digihealth pulse May 22, 2013

A few months ago, e-Patient Dave wrote a blog post highlighting a new Web property called Medivizor that is fulfilling the personalized health information future we’ve been sketching out for those subscribing to enmoebius bronze, our digital health research and advisory service. We focus on how Big Data, powerful computer programs and other technologies have the potential to transform how people seek health information. Today, when people proactively look for medical content, they start with a search engine like Google. However, we’ve suggested that the day is coming where significant numbers of people will instead rely on technologies that automatically filter and deliver health content for them. This is already happening in the news and information arena. For example, services like Zite leverage personal information people provide regarding their preferences and social connections to find and deliver relevant content.

Medivizor’s launch indicates that the future is closer than ever. According to its Website the platform “is different from other services because what we provide is truly personalized. We believe that we can solve the ‘needle in the haystack’ challenge. By knowing about the person who is sick and his/her particular condition, our technology will sift through available information and select just what is credible and relevant.” In addition, the service has garnered some early positive reviews from members of the diabetes online community (read one here).

The Health Content Personalization Sweet Spot: People With Chronic Conditions

In recent months, I’ve been delivering Webinars focusing on the shape and scope of the digital health future. In my talks I outline how future consumer adoption of digital health technologies will be driven by a quest to satisfy four fundamental needs, including personalization, or the delivery of highly relevant health content on-demand. (The deck, transcript and video is available to enmoebius bronze subscribers, but you can download a copy of the slides here for a limited time.) We’ve found that many within the active digital health consumer population say receiving personalized health content is highly important. In addition, a recent analysis of our data set reveals that the health information personalization sweet spot is among those with chronic conditions.

As illustrated in the infographic below, active digital health consumers with chronic conditions are 10% more likely to say receiving personalized health information is highly important. This preference for relevant content persists among a range of active digital health consumer subgroups with chronic conditions, especially quantified selfers and men. The people behind Medivizor likely recognize this, which is why their target market is people with serious medical conditions, including diabetes.

Health Organizations That Understand and Play the Personalization Game Will Win

In many other digital arenas, including advertising, social media and ecommerce, consumers are becoming accustomed to highly personalized content experiences. In addition, few are satisfied with the current state of online health search as finding relevant information requires a great deal of time and effort. This suboptimal state of affairs, coupled with the desire for personalized content we’re seeing in our research, suggests health organizations that shift from generic to personalized content delivery strategies will reap rewards. One example of a firm that long ago realized the benefits of providing this type of information is PatientsLikeMe. They have built a loyal following among patients who want to understand how their condition may evolve in the future and how best to manage it. Health Tap is another emerging success story, as they are helping people quickly receive answers to the health questions that matter most to them.

To learn more about (and receive advice on how to navigate) the coming personalization future and other critical digital health trends subscribe toenmoebius bronze. In addition (for a limited time) view an infographic focusing on the personalized health information sweet spot below or click here to download a PDF version.

Medivizor: Customizes Your Diabetes News & Keeps It Organized & In One Place

Diabetesaliciousness May 28, 2013

Diabetes infiltrates both my personal and my professional life 24X7, and the same can be said for my inbox.

I don’t know about you, but my inbox is bursting at the seams when it comes to emails about any all things diabetes related. I try and keep up, I really do. But I won’t lie to your or me for that matter, and I can’t keep track of all my diabetes emails, especially when it comes to diabetes studies, trials and the latest and greatest in diabetes news, re: breakthroughs, reports, etc. I’ve tried creating different diabetes folders for D studies, trials & news - And that works for a while, until it doesn’t.

So lets back track to a few months ago, when I received an email from Medivizor'sChief Operating Officer, Ronen Keinen, telling me all about their services and inviting me to be an Early Adopter.

Ronen explained Medivizor in these words: Medivizor provides personalized information updates for people with serious or chronic medical conditions - cutting edge research, new treatments, clinical trials and more in a way they can understand and act upon. Our mission is to bring our users the information that is relevant and specific to them by finding "the needle in the haystack".

And even though I was a little weary (because a lot of startups reach out to me pitching their sites and quite frankly, a lot of them are crap and don't benefit the patient,) but I was incredibly interested in hearing and learning more because what Ronen from Medivizor was telling me.

WHY? Because what Ronen was telling me in the phone conversation that followed his email, had me thinking that Medivizor had the potential to be a very good thing for people with chronic illnesses or diseases - not just diabetes.

SIDEBAR: Currently Medivizor supports only diabetes, breast, prostate, colorectal & skin cancers - but are in the process of adding more conditions.

Medivizor’s Mission in a nutshell (and I’m quoting directly from the website,) is to:

*Improve the lives of people with serious medical conditions and of those who care for them.

*Effectively apply software and the social web to the field of health for the betterment of humanity.

Ok, that all sounds great, but how do they do that?

When you register, you have to answer a series of questions (up to 15) re: what conditions you’re interested in receiving info about about as a patient or caregiver or both, and what types of info(studies, research, etc.,) your interested in receiving.

Medivizor pulls/filters articles that are personalized to your illness or condition and your interests, in essence making the notifications you receive tailor made to your specifications - And as the daughter of an actual tailor - I appreciate a good customized fit in all dimensions of my life.

But Medivizor goes one step further.. And turns my Medivizor Personal Space Pageinto a personalized repository of articles, treatment options, trials, etc and all stored one place .... Other than my inbox.

And that’s what really got me excited - Not only was it a one stop drop and shop for all articles diabetes related, everything was stored in one easy to organize location.

Medivizor notifies me every few days about articles (from actual medical journals) they think I’d be interested in, and the fact that all the data is stored in one place that I can go to and read whenever I have a moment is key.

I also like and appreciate the fact that the Medivizor team has the info in an easy to read formant - I’m not a Doctor, so the fact that the info is written in laymen’s terms is greatly appreciated.

The Personal Space Page also makes it easier to keep track of the information - And Medivizor makes sure that MY medical info is kept private.

As I stated previously, I like the fact that I can choose the “when,” when it comes to reading these articles, but the fact that I can also rate the articles on content, readability and relevance is a huge plus - Not to mention the fact that I can discuss articles in detail with other Medivizor users if I choose to.

Medivizor also makes it easy for me to take notes & highlight the articles on my PS (Personal Space) page, and send article links to my healthcare professional(s) or anyone else I think might find the subject matter interesting, as well as post and or tweet a link to a brief synapses of the article, which can be accessed in its entirety if you are a Medivizor member.

So how do you become a member of Medivizor since it currently invite only?

Bottom line: There’s a great team of folks behind Medivizor & it’s my sincere hope that Medivizor flourishes and grows exponentially because I think the services andvalues they provide are not only relevant - They are very much needed and incredibly beneficial to every person who wears the titles Patient and or CareGiver.

Medivizor can be found on the web by checking out the following links:

Enter Medivizor: The Personalized Medical Information Service

In Care of Dad Jun 20, 2013

It’s hard to keep up with the latest medical information out there, right? I’m sure you can relate to this. Our mom was diagnosed with colon cancer last November, so, naturally, my sister and I wanted to learn everything we could about her medical condition.

We jumped on the Internet to start our research, but it’s really exhausting work, sorting through the morass of information out there, trying to find information that’s relevant, credible and the least bit helpful. And way too much brainpower is wasted trying to figure out what most of it even means.

So I was pretty excited when I was introduced to a new personalized medical information service called Medivizor, which was developed specifically to help people just like you and me make sense of it all.

Here’s how it works: I signed up on Medivizor’s easy-to-use website by answering some questions about my mom’s medical situation, which is essential because it ensures that the information I receive is relevant to her condition.

Maybe once a week, I’ll get an email with a simple message, like the one I received yesterday:

Hello Kim,

New research paper: Does weight influence survival in patients with colorectal cancer? Click here to view.

That was it. Medivizor doesn’t waste my time with long, involved emails, and it doesn’t flood my inbox either. When there’s a piece of relevant information about research or a treatment option or a clinical trial, specific to my mom’s colon cancer, I get a succinct, focused email directing me to check out the new information.

The interface is clean and simple to use, and the messaging couldn’t be more straightforward. I love that. The information that Medivizor sends has been captured from medical journals and then nicely translated into plain English on my very own page on the site, which is called My Personal Space. It’s in this space that I can review all of the pertinent information collected by Medivisor. They even have a place for me to keep my own notes about each article and, with a click of a mouse, I can forward this information to my mom’s doctor or anyone else who might benefit. It’s easy as can be. And if I want to check out the original source of the information, I can do that as well, though the original journal may charge a fee for the info.

Since Medivizor is a startup, it currently handles only a small group of medical conditions: breast cancer, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, melanoma and diabetes. During the initial sign-up phase, you may need to wait a bit while becoming a full-fledged member, as the site staff tries to evaluate whether they can effectively assist you in these early stages of their own development. But don’t let that stop you from contacting Medivizor. It’s worth the short wait, and if they don’t currently support a medical condition relevant to your situation, then let your voice be heard to encourage its addition to the core group.

Knowledge is power, which makes Medivizor a powerhouse. It’s not just a keeper; it’s just what the doctor ordered. Oh, and did I mention that the service is free? Yep, that’s right, 100% free. Gotta love that part, too.

Kim Keller is the Co-Founder of In Care of Dad. She lives and works in New York City.

Colon Cancer Coalition / Get Your Rear In Gear Jun 26, 2013

Promoting a product or service is not something we normally do on this site, but we thought this service was too cool not tell our community about.

For the past month or so, we have been talking to the people at Medivizor about their new tool and offerings for those struggling to find information about colon cancer by turning to web searches and “Dr. Google.”

Medivizor seeks to simplify this generic search and provide customized results based on specific conditions, diagnosis and treatment plans. Then deliver results directly to your inbox, including results of studies available only behind pay walls. Plus, it is free for patients and caregivers.

It is for these reasons and more we have decided to partner with them. Once you sign up and create your secure profile, over time they send you information that is specific to your condition, with the medical jargon transcribed into easily-to-understand language. This information includes potential treatment options, cutting-edge research, clinical trials, lifestyle recommendations, and more.

To kick-off our partnership, Medivizor is providing the chance for one Get Your Rear in Gear subscriber to win an iPad Mini. One of the first 100 to sign up using the code ‘rearingear’ will win (when registering, use the code ‘rearingear’ when asked about the medical condition).

Please try out the service and then tell us what you think. Our partnership has just begun – expect to hear more in the near future.

The organization currently provides information for colorectal, breast, and prostate cancers; diabetes; and melanoma. For more information, check out this short video about Medivizor:

To celebrate our partnership, one of the first 100 to sign up to Medivizor will win an iPad mini (when signing up, use the code 'chris4life' when asked about the medical condition).Sign upChris4Life and Medivizor's partnership has just begun expect to hear more in the near future.

CEWeek, presented by the Consumer Electronics Association, combined several shows and breakout conferences in two days, with over 150 exhibitors on three contiguous show floors including the Made in NY/NYC Startup Pavilion (non-health). Sprinkled through the bazaar of wide-screen TVs, GM’s connected electric cars, iSpeakers and headphones, iPad cases and Digital Lifestyle Everything, there were some standout healthcare related electronics and tech.

PSiO Audio Visual Stimulation glasses deliver relaxation through light therapy (on the inside) tied to audio personal development programs for stress reduction, focus, sleep, concentration and weight management reinforcement. Your Editor was actually able to shut out the cacophony on the show floor and relax for eight and then later (completely stressed out) 38 minute programs–and then trotted off refreshed to Healthcare Pioneers till late PM. It was developed in Belgium and distributed online (to date) in the US. Some potential uses are in senior communities, music therapy, coupled with weight, diabetes or blood pressure management. $399.99 Website

Qardio’s sleekly designed cardiovascular monitors are not on the US market yet (lacking FDA approval) but seem to be something to look forward to. The QardioArm wraps neatly around the upper arm, sends data and reminders to your smartphone, and during the monitoring delivers soothing images, tracks BP on charts and delivers data to your doctor. The QardioCore is a chest strap with soft edges and continuous monitoring of EKG, heart rate, heart rate variability, physical activity intensity and skin temperature. Essentially it replaces a Holter monitor and does more; unlike AliveCor, it emphasizes continuous monitoring. Price not established.Website

Beddit seems to be between the now-defunct Zeo with a singular emphasis on sleep monitoring, but different from Jawbone UP and Fitbit in that there are no sensors to wear. The tracking strip is placed under the bedsheet and reporting goes to a smartphone app. Website

Wearables were disappointing. No Misfit Shine, a mannequin with the Etymotic BEAN velcro’d to the head, the Isowalk smart cane with connected capability currently on Indiegogo. But this sound-reactive dress from London’s Rainbow Winters in holographic leather and electric luminescent panels was Tina-worthy.

After about two hours of sensory overload (but good press eats, at least at the start), The Gimlet Eyeplugged Ears and suggested we look at hearing assistance devices. iEverything has developed a Generation Deaf, joining Tina, Mick and those of us who went to too many Who concerts in our misspent youth. Cynaps by MaxVirtual is a Bluetooth-enabled bone conduction headset concealed in a baseball cap. Unfortunately The Eye found the Cap insufficiently boosted sound and had to be excruciatingly tightened in order to work. Gizmag’s review concurs. Etymotic BEAN Quiet Sound Amplifier fits in the ear and claims to automatically enhance only soft sounds that contribute to clarity of speech. Eager for a preview–thinking of her late mom with hearing loss who was always asking to ‘clarify’ sound on the TV–despite a few tries your Editor could not snag a demo. The BEAN did attract a crowd. Etymotic also offers a PC-based Home Hearing Test and ‘safe listening’ headphones for children. Great ideas all, but a little jumbled in presentation and on the website.

The last stop was at Loksak with plastic envelopes (barrier bags) in various sizes from tiny phone to tablet that offer 100 percent protection from water, humidity, sand and snow, and are fully functional (touch screens and audio) through the envelope. Wholly made in USA and a military vendor, one potential market is for clinicians in hospitals and practices–to mitigate the carrying of infection, resist fluids and be more easily sanitizable without damaging electronics or keyboards. For HIPAA security concerns, the gray ripstop-like ShieldSak has a ‘Faraday cage’ which prevents hacking and reading of contents and cards within. Website.

CEWeek 2013/Digital Health Summit

Four floors up, I sat with Tal Givoly, CEO and Oren Fuerst, PhD, Executive Chairman, of startup health information company Medivizor. Their ‘job to be done’ is to personalize the tidal wave of available health information for those with chronic and serious diseases. For this group, the current state is 1) too much information, 2) hard to interpret research and 3) difficult to determine if the information is applicable/relevant/reliable to their chronic condition or disease. By signing up, a patient or family member can receive a customized delivery of the most relevant information, ‘digested’ and interpreted at a 10th grade reading level, for free (and HIPAA compliant).

Mr. Givoly explained that they are at the early ‘invitational’ stage; anyone can sign up, but information is currently provided only on breast, prostate and colorectal cancers; melanoma and diabetes. Later in July, lung cancer and cardiovascular will be added. A more comprehensive selection is planned to be available by Fall. When asked about doctor and clinician reactions to date, the feedback to Mr. Givoly has been that doctors are treating patients with this information differently and appreciate it, because Medivizor sorts out the irrelevant data. Some future directions are partnerships–referral to clinical trials–and to be licensed to medical institutions as a feed into EHRs. Mr. Givoly participated on a DHS panel on ‘Five Technologies We’re Betting Your Health On”. Later in the day, he and Steven Kaplan, MD, their Chief Medical Officer, were panelists/presenters at Health 2.0 NYC Healthcare Pioneers.Medivizor website.

Medivizor - Site Review

BellaOnline - The Voice of Women Jul 20, 2013

(by Rann Patterson, BellaOnline's Cancer Editor)

Medivizor - Site Review

Who is Medivizor?

Medivizor is a company whose mission is to help patients with serious illnesses such as cancer, and their caregivers, by assimilating credible information gathered from both the internet and from their expert medical professionals, and deliver that relevant information to you, in plain language.

How Medivizor is Different

One search on the internet can yield hundreds of millions of results. And let's face it, we only get fifteen minutes with a doctor, and we always want to know more. We know we're not doctors but when it's our life on the line, we turn over every rock to try to find answers to all the gazillion questions that seem to go unanswered. Cancer patients often suffer from fatigue, and ease-of-use of a medical information site is important to us.

Cutting-edge Technology

This is what makes Medivizor so valuable. The company's IT experts are trained in software and research and development. They are using cutting-edge technology that enables them to garner information from the internet, glean what is already out there, and connect that with input from the team's medical experts. Then the information is personalized to your particular condition and delivered in simple, non-medical language. They are a start-up in the beta-stage and want you to swing by and register if you or someone you know has one of the conditions listed below. The more information they can get from engaged patients, the more they can help. They are steadily growing, and currently offer help for:

Breast Cancer

Prostate Cancer

Diabetes

Melanoma

Heart Disease (cardiovascular, hypertension)

Lung Cancer

Values and Social Networking

There are four on the Executive Team, and they have decades of experience in their related fields. Photos and bios are under the Team section.

Their Values:

Respect

Innovation

Perseverance

Optimism + Realism

Life First

I love this statement that is included within the Innovation paragraph: “We will never rest on our laurels and will not fear cannibalizing our solutions.” In other words, they don't mind saying “...back to the drawing board!” I respect someone who can admit they don't know everything. It builds trust.

Their Mission Statement

1. Improve the lives of people with serious medical conditions and of those who care for them.

2. Effectively apply software and the [social] web to the field of health for the betterment of humanity.

They are tuned into social networking to get answers. I actually discovered Medivizor during a healthcare chat on Twitter.

Blog

The site also features a blog page, and the blogs are written from a human viewpoint with a dash of philosophy. The well-chosen photos compliment the articles and are very unusual and thought-provoking. In fact, to get a better idea of the heart of Medivizor, I would highly recommend that you read the Blog Section first.

Take-away

The Medivizor team is a bold and passionate, yet remarkably humble group that is truly trying to engage to get answers for you and I. When a person or company makes that kind of human investment, and continues it – mission can be accomplished! Be sure to visit Medivizor to see if they can be of help to you or someone that you love.

The Rise of Just-in-Time Health Information Systems

Enspektos Jul 30, 2013

Are the days of Dr. Google numbered? Today, a range of digital health firms are working on ways to automatically deliver relevant, customized and personalized health content to consumers. These companies are ushering in an era where the act of using a search engine to find health content may become a quaint relic of the past. Learn about the rise of just-in-time health information systems, which promise to transform the way we find and consume health content forever.

Medivizor wants to one-up Dr. Google with a personalized medical research service

GigaOM Aug 07, 2013

For the past nine or so months, New York-based Medivizor has tested a personalized medical research service with a small group of invited patients and caregivers. This week, the company opened up its service to the public.

To address those problems, Medivizor says its free service curates and interprets top research content for users so that they only receive the information most relevant to their condition.

“It’s a combination of the social web, software and medical expertise. All these three work together to create personalized medical information,” said CEO and co-founder Tal Givoly.

To start, users answer a set of questions that help the service understand their needs. For example, if a user indicates that he has diabetes, it prompts him to input the type of diabetes, any complications he has, when he was diagnosed, family history, medication and several other details. It also asks for basic information, like weight, age and ethnicity.

As relevant information emerges – either from published research papers or news reports spotted by the company’s algorithms, its team of medical experts or the community at large – the service translates it into understandable language for users and routes it to the people who could use it most.

Given the amount of research generated, most doctors can’t possibly stay current with the literature that’s most relevant to each of their patients. So it usually falls to the patient to stay on top of the latest research. But, as Medivizor’s chief medical officer Dr. Steve Kaplan (who is also a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of the Men’s Health Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital) pointed out, patients often end up with bad information.

That means doctors, who are already short on time, are left devoting a good chunk of a patient visit debunking what patients have discovered. Givoly said Medivizor’s hope is that by arming patients and caregivers with better information, they can make doctor’s visits more efficient and encourage better outcomes.

Considering that it’s free, Medivizor could certainly appeal to patients with chronic conditions who are most actively looking answers. But, for now, the service only supports those with a few conditions, including prostate cancer, breast cancer, diabetes and melanoma. The company said it plans to expand to cardiovascular disease, lung cancer and other conditions soon.

It’s also not the only company out there interested in providing people with personalized health information online. For example, Meddik offers a social platform that lets patients share helpful resources; Symcat relies on algorithms to help people understand their symptoms; and HealthTap gives people 24/7 access to doctors who can answer personal questions. Health information giant WebMD has plans to personalize health information through a partnership with Qualcomm Life that would let it learn more about patient needs through devices.

In addition to its free service, Givoly said Medivizor, which has raised an undisclosed amount of funding, is considering a premium product for patients and caregivers. He also said the company could make money through advertising, referrals and a licensed white label product for healthcare institutions.

Digital Inspiration: e-health

Jungle Minds Aug 13, 2013

(original in Dutch - translated by Google translate).

The digitization has led to sweeping changes in the health industry. These developments may also named e-health. For example, self-control through online tools ensures that people can save a visit to the doctor time and costs. In the Netherlands we already see that fewer and fewer people go to the doctor, because they prefer first information about symptoms and diseases up on the internet (source: Gezondheidsnet).

The internet also ensures that patients digitally the course of their disease can track, for example, a diabetes diary. In this way, important information can be stored structured and be made available. Electronic patient records meet the growing demand for transparency and patient autonomy. The online interaction between patients and doctors, among other things a lot of potential for providing preventive medicine. The result of all these developments is that patients are better informed and have the knowledge to participate in decisions about their treatment. Naturally all these development also much impact on the process of care.

Below I give five examples of developments in e-health from Italy, Korea, Israel, Netherlands and America.

1. Diagnosis platform is most appropriate doctor

The Italian start-up mydoctorPlus diagnoses diseases of users through its platform, and then find the right specialist that the user can see. People who need professional help in the cities of Biella and Novara can use the platform to show what is wrong with them and what the symptoms are. Thereafter, a possible disease outlined. The platform uses the locations of users with a view to the nearest specialist and immediately provides the corresponding contact information.

2. Self-diagnosis app checked health

The latest generation of apps, on the basis of a measurement self-diagnose. The app Ucheck hear strips that immerses the user in his urine. The smartphone then he takes a picture of the strip. The app analyzes the picture of the urine then 25 possible syndromes.

3. Hospital informs patients through service app

The Seoul National University Bundang Hospital has installed an IT system that sends important information to mobile devices of patients near the building, and so leads them around the hospital. The app uses GPS data and is active only when users enter the hospital. It shows patients the facilities and estimated waiting times for appointments. Users also the cost of health care they purchase understand. These can then pay them directly from the app. With a wrist strap that connects them via RFID patients can even get access to all information related to the treatment. From their hospital bed to a tablet PC

4. Subscribe to information about new treatments

The Israeli start-up Medivizor informs its subscribers regularly on the progress of their health. Users enter when logging data on their health status. If an article published in a medical journal that can be effective in remedying health of the subscriber, it will be informed immediately relevant. Subscribers also receive a summary of the article in understandable language and other important information that they can bring to their specialist easily.

5. Platform connects on cancer (ex) patients with each

Kanker.nl is a Dutch online platform that brings together knowledge and experiences about cancer. The ambition of kanker.nl is to build a reliable, safe and rich Internet environment where the (ex) cancer patient and his family can go for information about cancer, peer support and exchange of experiences. A 'empowered patient in the view of the initiators of Kanker.nl have access to information and (e-health) services of good quality, timely, complete, reliable and available around the clock online. In short, the website combines the power of a social network with access to reliable medical information.

Medivizor Makes its Health Information Service Available to the Public

Business Wire (by Medivizor) Aug 20, 2013

Helping People with Serious or Chronic Illness Become More Knowledgeable about Their Unique Condition and Treatment Options, and Better Able to Collaborate with Their Doctor

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--After being accessible to a select group of users by invitation-only, Medivizor™, the innovative health information platform, is now available to the general public (in public beta) with expanded support for medical conditions including lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer, as well as melanoma, diabetes, coronary artery disease, hypertension and stroke.

“Promoting a product or service is not something we normally do, but we thought this service was too cool not tell our community about”

Individuals coping with a serious illness, as well as their families, are often confused about the nature of their illness and its treatment. Those interested in learning more about the diagnosis, prognosis and recommended treatment turn to websites (e.g., “Dr. Google”) to find the answers. While the web contains a vast amount of information, this information is, unfortunately, too general, too technical, sometimes outdated or misleading, and more often than not irrelevant for the particular condition of the patient.

Medivizor is a free subscription service to patients and caregivers. Users of Medivizor receive via email, in a comprehensive and easy to understand language, updated and relevant information about cutting-edge research, treatment options, guidelines, clinical trials, and more, related to their specific condition. This information is personalized and tailor-made to the particulars of the case and the patient. Medivizor’s patent-pending technology and team of medical specialists glean and process published material, including recent research results and scientific news. Users receive content that’s suitable for the layman and shareable with their communities and healthcare provider. Compared to the generic, and overwhelming number of results from keyword searches on the web, Medivizor saves time and effort.

Medivizor Advances The Patient-Doctor Relationship

Medivizor’s service further helps improve doctor-patient communication by educating patients about the available treatments and their relative desirability in an easy to understand format.

The service also assists treating doctors (and their patients) by alerting them to the most recent research findings and clinical trials that are relevant to their patient. This is accomplished through Medivizor’s unique, personalized system for matching individuals with specific clinical trials available worldwide.

Currently, the new public service applies to more than a quarter of the 133 million Americans with serious or chronic illnesses. In the months to come, Medivizor will add additional illnesses to its coverage, eventually supporting all that cope with one or more chronic conditions to help them, their caregivers, and medical teams.

Leading health and disease-specific bloggers praise Medivizor:

During its closed beta (“early access”) phase, Medivizor gained the recognition and appreciation of health-related bloggers and thought leaders who praise the new service it brings to the market.

Recently, leading cancer related organizations, including the Colon Cancer Coalition and Chris 4 Life, have partnered with Medivizor to promote its personalized content platform. “Promoting a product or service is not something we normally do, but we thought this service was too cool not tell our community about,” said the Colon Cancer Coalition in a public call to its members and followers. Medivizor is in the process of collaborating with other patient organizations as it expands its reach and coverage of additional illnesses.

Medivizor Takes on WebMD, Dr. Google, With Customized Health Service

Xconomy Aug 21, 2013

When people are diagnosed with a disease, the first move they, or their family members typically make is to book a long appointment with Dr. Google or WebMD. A New York-based startup named Medivizor thinks they’re making a mistake. Now it will get its shot to prove it.

Yesterday, the one-year old startup began offering its personalized medical information service, Medivizor, to the general public—specifically, people with one of these conditions: lung, colorectal, breast, or prostate cancer; melanoma; diabetes; coronary artery disease; hypertension; or stroke. Rather than leaving subscribers to sift through a whole Internet’s worth of medical information for relevant details, Medivizor promises to answer their questions about their specific conditions. Signing up is free; the company plans to turn the service into a moneymaker through referral fees and other means, according to co-founder and CEO Tal Givoly.

Givoly, med tech investor Oren Fruest, and Weill Cornell Medical College urology professor Stephen Kaplan formed the idea for Medivizor a few years ago. Givoly and Fruest had watched friends and loved ones cope with serious illnesses, and noted how time-consuming it was to stay abreast of the latest information about those diseases. And Kaplan had seen patients come in with printouts having incorrectly diagnosed themselves based on information they gleaned from Dr. Google.

Tal Givoly, CEO of Medivizor

“We realized that there’s a problem with health information. It’s not personal, and it’s not understandable,” Givoly says. “There’s a lot of great health information out there, but it’s generic.”

So with an unspecified investment from themselves and certain angels (Givoly wouldn’t specify who), the group founded Medivizor in 2012 with the plan to tailor that information to individuals based on their already-diagnosed conditions.

The idea is for Medivizor to serve as a personalized filter for people with specific diseases. Rather than blindly search the Internet, unearthing information that could be irrelevant, outdated, too general, or just inaccurate, people would rely on a team of Medivizor’s in-house doctors, PhDs, and medical writers—as well as outside specialists the company consults with—to sift through online resources, find the latest credible, relevant information, and send a detailed e-mail to the subscriber. Those reports are peer-reviewed internally before they are sent, according to Givoly.

Here’s how that would work. A person would go to Medivizor’s site and open up an account specifying what condition he or she was suffering from and some demographic details, but without revealing any of their private information. Medivizor would ask a series of questions (between 5 and 15) about the disease—for example, what type of treatment the person has already received, what types are being considered—to pinpoint the exact nature of the patient’s condition.

Medivizor would then provide an initial report tailored to the subscriber with items such as treatment options given the person’s specific situation. After that, the company would send the subscriber a customized information alert whenever relevant new information became available—about a new clinical trial or data published in a medical journal, say. Those alerts would be written by an in-house team that translated medical jargon into something a 10th grade English student could understand, Givoly says.

As a person’s condition changed, he or she could update the profile, and receive updates tweaked to account for them.

“It gives people the peace of mind that they could better manage their condition,” Givoly says.

Despite the number of companies coming up with new ways to utilize personal health information, Givoly asserts that Medivizor is providing the only service of its kind. WebMD, for example, inked a partnership with Qualcomm Life in March geared towards tailoring health information to consumers by linking data from their health devices—like a glucose meter—to a WebMD app. But Givoly says that that initiative is focusing on pieces of data, rather than the whole picture of a person’s health condition.

“We really capture the essence of what makes one person different from another, not the granular data that needs to be mined for information,” he says. “It’s the whole situation—not one aspect that could be monitored with a FitBit.”

That’s all well and good, but how to turn the idea into a profitable business? Givoly says the company has three plans to do so. One is charging a fee for referrals that Medivizor would make to connect a patient to a “hard to match” clinical trial, or to certain medical services or second opinions, Givoly says.

Another avenue would be licensing the service to hospitals and clinics. And a third option would be starting a line of premium services, such as a case-management concierge service that would more hands-on advice, he says.

Medivizor hasn’t accomplished any of this as of yet. Rather, it’s only done beta testing of the service on a small basis and formed partnerships with patient organizations like the Colon Cancer Coalition and Chris 4 Life to help promote it. But Givoly still says that the company believes that it can be successful enough to become cash flow positive with these types of revenue streams in about 12 months. Its biggest roadblock, he says, is making the people who need the service aware that it exists. The company is also working to add other conditions such as multiple sclerosis to its menu as it begins offering the service.

“We feel that there’s a lot of people that can benefit from this,” he says. “Every day we make these connections that can save peoples’ lives, or improve their quality of life. And people are really thanking us all the time for doing that.”

Medivizor patient info site goes public with additional information

Telehealth & Telecare Aware Aug 24, 2013

Medivizor, which was one of the better discoveries of our CE Week (NYC) coverage and the H20NYC/Healthcare Pioneers evening back in July [TTA 3 July], has moved out of what was a largely private beta to what they interestingly term a ‘public beta’. The site provides individualized content, understandable by the layman, for subscribers on a larger group of diseases which were on track for this fall: lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer, as well as melanoma, diabetes, coronary artery disease, hypertension and stroke. The goal is to improve doctor-patient communications by better patient education. Another important feature is a “personalized system for matching individuals with specific clinical trials available worldwide.” Company release, Xconomy article.

A related New York Times article is an appreciation of how physicians are overwhelmed by information and that “doctors also need a skilled docent to help walk them through all that curated data.” Healing the Overwhelmed Physician

PSFK Jun 06, 2013

Each week PSFK.com with its partner Boehringer Ingelheim bring you a snapshot of Five Innovative Ideas that are reshaping the health care industry. This week’s innovations include a wristband that reads your mood and a 3D printed ear that could give you super-human hearing.

Wellness Tracker Takes Mood Rings To The Next Level
The W/Me wristband is a wearable sensor that monitors a user’s autonomic nervous system, which provides feedback on body activity that they may not be aware of. In order to provide a more holistic view of health, the device translates the data it collects into three scores: mental state, agility, and ANS age. Mental state can be either passive, excitable, pessimistic, anxious, or ideally, balanced somewhere in the middle. Agility score measures how easily the body adapts to changes in the environment and how much stress the user is feeling. Additionally, ANS age calculates the approximate age of the user’s ANS based on breathing, stress, and other factors. The W/Me project is different from most activity tracking in that it can provides users with a complete picture of mental and physical health.

Flexible, Wearable Sensor Could Revolutionize Heat Monitoring
Researchers have developed a new, wearable sensor that could greatly improve the accuracy and practicality of heart monitoring. Developed by Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering atStanford University, the paper-thin, stamp-sized sensor is made with flexible organic materials and can be worn under an adhesive bandage on the wrist to monitor the pulse. The reduced scale and high sensitivity is achieved with a thin middle layer of compressible rubber covered with tiny pyramid-shaped bumps only a few microns wide. When pressure is applied the pyramids deform slightly, which results in a measurable change in the electromagnetic field and the current flow in the device. The degree of sensitivity achieved by the monitor means that when placed on a patient’s wrist it can measure the two distinct peaks of the pulse wave as well as fluctuations within the wave, opening up the possibility for extremely detailed diagnostics. The device offers advantages in situations where the pulse needs to be measured constantly, such as monitoring patients during surgery or athletes during sporting activity.

3D Printed Ear Can Hear Beyond Normal Human Ability
Scientists at Princeton University have designed a 3D printed bionic ear that can augment normal human hearing. To build the device, researchers 3D printed cells and nanoparticles into the shape of an ear, and then combined a small coil antenna with cartilage to create this bionic device. The result was a fully-functional organ that can hear radio frequencies a million times higher than our human ears. The project was intended less as an exploration of potential health implications, but rather to examine the possibilities of using technology to extend the normal human abilities.

Search Tool Helps Users Find Personalized Health InformationMedivizor is an internet search tool that offers results personalized to each user. Currently open to those looking for information on breast cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, colorectal cancer, and melanoma, Medivizor users first sign up and enter details about themselves and their condition – or those of the person they’re caring for. The service then delivers relevant news and updates that may help them learn more about their condition and what it means for them. The research on the site is curated based on quality, ease of comprehension and whether it includes actionable options for patients to pursue. Medivizor doesn’t aim to do away with professional opinion, but instead empowers patients to do their own reliable research they can then share with their doctors.

Scientists Create Embryonic Stem Cells By Cloning
Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University have figured out how to produce human embryonic stem cells by cloning them via somatic cell nuclear transfer. The goal was to create undifferentiated stem cells that wouldn’t be rejected by a recipient’s own immune system. To achieve this, a research team removed the DNA from donated unfertilized human eggs and inserted them with skin cells extracted from a human adult. After coaxing them with precisely-timed electronic pulses, an inactivated virus, and a chemical bath, the cells began to divide, generating a viable colony. The breakthrough could eventually lead to therapeutic cloning in which patient-specific lines of embryonic stem cells can be generated. These stem cells could be used to help a patient restore his or her own tissue, like heart cells or other bioengineered organs, without the fear of rejection, while greatly improving recovery times.

PSFK has partnered with Boehringer Ingelheim to bring you a steady stream of inspiring news and ideas in the health and wellness space. Once each week, we will be posting an article on PSFK.com. If you would like to gain access to the full stream of content, please check out Boehringer Ingelheim’s Facebook Page, where they are publishing a regular stream of inspiring and informative content.

Online patient platforms vie to one-up “Dr. Google”

Mobile Health News Oct 02, 2013

Recent data from the Pew Internet and American Life project found that 8 in 10 online health inquiries start at a search engine like Google, a number that hasn’t changed since 2000. But medical information from a search engine is often incomplete or untrustworthy, and isn’t always enough information to answer specific questions. At the Health 2.0 event in Santa Clara, California this week, several creators of online patient communities talked about their approaches to connecting patients with health information online.

“When people get sick with a chronic condition, they go to the internet. The first thing they do is get overwhelmed with everything they see there,” said Tal Givoly, CEO and Cofounder of Medivizor.

Medivizor is a platform that presents patients with an easily readable summary of the latest medical literature pertaining to their condition and treatment options. The user’s very first engagement with the site is to answer a short survey about their disease, including their specific diagnosis, symptoms, and the treatments their doctor is considering. The site delivers summaries, written at a 10th grade level, of the latest articles about the treatment and condition as well as a primer and a list of open clinical trials. A social aspect comes in because other Medivizor users who have been shown an article can comment on it and have discussions with one another.

Another company, MyHealthTeams, has a question and answer platform on its site, another way to help patients find medical information online. CEO Eric Peacock said the site has “Facebook level” engagement, with monthly active users north of 50 percent. Its question and answer module, wherein patients on the site both ask and answer, has a 99 percent answer rate, he said.

Peacock spoke specifically about the company’s MyMSTeam website, one of three disease-specific sites the company operates. MyMSTeam is a social network for people living with multiple sclerosis. He said the company’s strategy is to provide a space and tools for members of the community to support each other.

“We’re really just hosting the party,” he said. “Our job is to make it easy for you to connect with others.”

The site lets users find social connections by searching by disease specifics, symptoms, and treatments as well as age range and location. He said people share a lot of information about their disease because they know it’s only being seen by a closed community. They can give help and support on their networks and share updates, stories, and links.

Patients can also list their care team, which serves a similar purpose to a physician rating platform. Unlike an anonymous rating system, endorsements tied to profiles allow users to ask follow up questions about a doctor.

A company that takes an opposite approach to many of the same features as MyHealthTeam isHealthTap, whose head of product Sean Mehra was in attendance at the Health 2.0 event. HealthTap doesn’t break patients down into disease groups, but its platform also doesn’t rely on patients interacting with one another. Instead, HealthTap focuses on promoting patient interaction with a community of doctors.

HealthTap’s flagship product is a Q&A platform where physicians respond with short answers to patient health questions and rate each other’s answers.

“When you go online, the two main problems are that the info is either not trustworthy or not personalized,” Mehra said. With HealthTap, doctors are “not only spitting out the facts, but their answers are tailored to the question itself, very compassionate, and doctors are peer reviewing each other’s answers.”

The doctors aren’t compensated for their answers, but Mehra said they overwhelmingly say they do it mainly because it’s fun, and a relatively easy way to help someone. He also said the format for the answers makes them too short to get into prescription, advice, or any other contentious territory.

One more speaker at the Health 2.0 session, PatientsLikeMe Marketing Partner Brad Gescheider, spoke not about how his company provides answers to patients, but how it uses its patient community to create answers for researchers. The company’s Open Research Exchange is geared to create a library of free-to-use patient reported outcome measures for a variety of conditions.

Medivizor’s Donation Campaign of Thanks

Medivizor Nov 20, 2013

Medivizor has begun a donation campaign that lasts from now until the 2014 New Year’s Day.

As part of this campaign, Medivizor will donate $1 (or £1) to one of the following three beneficiary organizations for each person that signs up for Medivizor.

Diabetes

Diabetes is described as an invisible and isolating disease. The Diabetes Hands Foundation’s (DHF) mission is to reduce that isolation through connecting people with diabetes through social media. The “Hands” portion of its name refers to that connecting and creation of community. For every person with diabetes who subscribes to Medivizor between now and New Year’s Day 2014, the Diabetes Hands Foundation will receive $1 from Medivizor. Emily Coles announced the campaign on DHF blog TuDiabetes.org and Manny Hernandez, president of DHF tells Medivizor “We are very appreciative of you doing this.”

Breast Cancer

“@Medivizor love for @METAvivor” is the catchy tongue twister, coined by AnneMarie Cicarrella, announcing the donation campaign. METAvivor is an organization that is working to increase funding for research on metastatic cancer, specifically for metastatic breast cancer. On learning that Medivivor will donate $1 to METAvivor for every person diagnosed with breast cancer who signs up, from now until New Years Day 2014, Kelly Lange, President, said, “Many of us here at METAvivor have been using the Medivizor site, and have found it very helpful.”

Prostate Cancer

Finally, Prostate Cancer UK invests in medical research and provides information and support to men with a prostate cancer diagnosis. Medivizor is donating £1 for every man in the UK with prostate cancer that signs up for Medivizor’s free service.

Happy Thanksgiving

Thank you supporters and subscribers. To sign up, for FREE to receive your private personal health information and updates, and to contribute to one of these causes, sign up here: http://medivizor.com/ (enter email address and click “Sign Up”).

Also, consider sharing information about this donation drive with everybody you know. You never know who might benefit from Medivizor, and till New Years, also these organizations.

100 Social Media and Digital Health Accounts to Follow in 2014

HCSM Monitor Dec 29, 2013

Social media is a radical shift in the way we communicate. The healthcare conversation is no longer a one-way narrative but is evolving into a global, participatory discussion. If you want to find where that discussion is most visibly and influentially taking place you need look no further than Twitter. Here you will find the latest healthcare news, the most innovative medical research and the conversations that matter to health consumers discussed in real-time across the globe. Physicians, nurses, medical and health researchers and other allied healthcare professionals interact with patients, pharmaceutical representatives, support groups, opinion leaders, and anyone with an interest in healthcare.

I decided to curate a list of 100 of the social media and digital health accounts I follow on Twitter. From the USA to Europe, this list represents the global reach of Twitter in disseminating and expanding healthcare information. On it you will find a mix of healthcare professionals, advocates and patients, alongside pharmaceutical reps and marketers. While you will be familiar with some of the names on this list who have amassed large followings, I wanted particularly to highlight the accounts of those you may not be so familiar with. Their names may not be as well-known on a global stage but they have consistently added value to the healthcare conversation throughout 2013 and are poised to add even more in the new year.

I am aware that some people will question why make these lists at all. They can appear arbitrary and restricting the list to 100 inevitably means there will be names omitted that you feel should have been included. Even I realized after I put the list together that I had left some key influencers out – completely unintentionally – so this is by no means a definitive list, nor is it meant to signify any hierarchical structure or stroking of egos – though there are some who will claim it is so. Those of us who are immersed in Twitter sometimes forget that when we started we weren’t familiar with many of the accounts we now follow every day. I hope this list can be a starting point for those new to Twitter as they join the conversation. As you become more familiar with Twitter your network will expand and you will create your own list.

Even for those of us who are experienced Twitter users, we can always discover a new gem in an account we may not have come across before. I know I can be guilty of swimming in the same Twitter pool and every now and again it is good to expand our horizons. I hope this list will help you (like Thea’s tweet indicates below) expand your network to make it even more valuable, global and inclusive.

Personalized Information for Your Diabetes!

Diabetes Daily / Ginger Vieira Jan 21, 2014

Whether you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes, a specific type of cancer, or hemophilia, the information that you need could be very different than the generalized information provided on most medical websites. Medivizor is a new website that allows you to get precisely the research and information you specifically need for your personalized healthcare needs. And the best part: it’s totally free.

I spoke with C.O.O. Ronen Keinan about how people with diabetes could make the best use of Medivizor, and more, in this interview:

Ginger: Who or what was the inspiration for Medivizor?

Ronen: Each one of the founders of Medivizor had his own personal story on how he became aware of the issue, whether he was coping with a chronic condition, was a caregiver for a loved one, saw friends coping with their daughter’s serious illness or a doctor. We wanted to find a simple solution for a big problem we realized ourselves – how can one get the best cutting-edge health information that is truly relevant to his or her specific medical situation, is only based on credible resources and is in a language one can understand and act on. Better yet – why can’t we always stay abreast of the latest developments in the area of health/medicine of concern to us without constantly researching the web for it?

We realized that this was a problem for doctors as well – how can they keep abreast and know what is relevant for their patients with thousands of research papers published a year?

We figured out how to solve this problem by applying the power of software technologies combined with medical expertise and infused with the wisdom of the crowd. By doing so, we believe we managed to create a truly unique and valuable service.

Ginger: Can Medivizor really provide information and navigation for every health condition or does it have some limits?

Ronen: Not yet. The health information personalization technology and service depends on deep understanding of each medical condition. We began to test our service late in 2012 in invitation-only mode and released our public beta on August of 2013. We currently support over 400 medical conditions (all cases of diabetes, 88% of new cancer incidents, 75% of new cardiovascular cases and infertility). We are constantly working to add the support for more medical conditions. This is also based on requests coming in, as we encourage people to tell us what they are interested in even if we do not yet support their medical condition.

So far, the feedback has been extremely positive. We have received support and endorsements from several nonprofit organizations; also, many bloggers covered us with a recommendation to try out our new service, and most importantly, our subscribers are passionate about what we do, telling us what they love and where they believe we should do better. Actually in a survey we conducted, 94% of them told us that they would recommend Medivizor to a family member or friend in need.

Ginger: More specifically, how do you see Medivizor specially supporting a person with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, or their caretaker, such as parents of children with diabetes?

Ronen: Actually, one of the most active communities within Medivizor is the diabetic one. When you sign up we ask you specific questions about you and your diabetes, which allow us to personalize as much as we can the information coming your way. Information might include treatment options, new research, clinical trials, lifestyle tips and more, only relevant to your specific condition, based on reliable sources and in a language you can understand.

Although very valuable, we’re glad to say the service is free for patients and caregivers. It’s important to note that Medivizor is HIPAA compliant: private and secure – we do not even ask for your name and respect your right (and need) for privacy.

Perhaps one of the reasons our diabetic community is rather active is because Medivizor is available on any smartphone or tablet “on-the-go”. Whenever there is an update of information specifically relevant for an individual, we notify them via email. These are still early days for us, but thus far we already have people from 52 countries around the world using Medivizor, though most are from the United States.

One of the nice things people really like is the ability to share and discuss the items they receive. This is because when they comment (anonymously if they desire), they are actually only talking with others with a very similar medical profile. This is the power of true personalization.

Ginger: What are the next goals and plans for Medivizor? What’s next on the horizon?

Ronen: We have many plans and are very excited about what we have in store. We actually launched one program recently – dozens of clinics across the United States are now ‘prescribing’ Medivizor to their patients as a source of personalized health information. The feedback we received so far is very encouraging, so we’ll be expanding this program to more clinics and medical institutions. We plan to add the support for additional medical conditions and also introduce various features that are all based on greater personalization and provide more value to our subscribers. We’re constantly listening to our subscribers and their feedback is quickly being incorporated in the service.

Most people Medivizor can help don’t yet know a service like ours even exists – so we appreciate any help in sharing this info with anybody that we might help. You can do so by telling someone, sharing on social media (how most people discover us), sending an email, and more. Anybody coping with serious or chronic illness can benefit – if we don’t support the medical condition they are interested in now, they’ll be notified as soon as we do. Just send them over to sign up at http://medivizor.com.

International Expert Dr Steve Kaplan talks about Patient Empowerment

Grand Magazine Radio Dec 10, 2013

Dr. Kaplan joins Grand Magazine Radio today to share how a patient or patient advocate can empower themselves with the powerful new service provided by Medivizor. This service enables to the patient to focus on the specific disease or condition that they suffer from while information is delivered to them from medical experts around the world.

Dr. Kaplan is an internationally recognized leader in both the diagnosis and teatement of male and female voiding dysfunction. This includes BPH, unirnary incontienence, neuroginic bladder and prostatitis. He works together with other physicians at one of the most comprehensive care facilities in the world - the renowned New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Conrel Medical Center. All Weill Conrell Physicians are committed to delivering outstanding medical care with compassion and concern for each patient. They are part of the Weill Conell's 100 year old tradition of excellence in academic medicine. Weill Conell Physicians are academic leaders responsible for many health restoring medical breakthroughs and advances.

Sorting Online Medical Information: New Site Takes the Guesswork Out

HealthyWomen.org Feb 18, 2014

A quick Google search for "breast cancer information" yields 220million hits in two-tenths of a second.

That's great stuff—but seriously??? How can anyone be expected to sort through that much online medical information to find what's pertinent? Is it outdated? Is it reliable?

I'm a person who needs to be involved in my treatment. Back in 2006, it took four months from the doctor seeing the spot on a routine mammogram to being diagnosed with invasive lobular breast cancer. During that time, I spent hours researching on Google only to have a curveball thrown at me when I went back to the doctor and he said, "Oh no, that doesn't pertain to you."

Aaarrrrggghhh! I still have the binders with inches and inches of paper. The fact was I didn't know if I was reading something from a medical journal or just somebody's opinion. I'm NED (no evidence of disease) now, but I still do research as a patient advocate.

Then, this past year, I got the news that my mom's breast cancer—she was NED for 20 years—has spread to a bone. I started searching Dr. Google again, but around that same time I was introduced to a new website,Medivizor. Intrigued, I decided to take it for a test run. Or two.

When I signed up, I answered a few questions about my specific breast cancer. I received one state-of-the-art summary relevant to my situation that was a good start. Then I started getting updates: medical journal articles translated into plain language that I could easily understand. I receive email notifications of new, current research relevant to my situation once or twice a week.

It's refreshing! For the first time, I don't need to search the Internet.

As a caregiver, I created an account for my mom. One day, I received a new email notification of a relevant clinical trial. In the past, I've searched Clinicaltrials.gov, a repository listing almost 140,000 trials in every state and in 182 countries. Instead of plowing through all that information, I got to see where a trial, pertinent to my mom's situation, is located (with a map view) relative to our location, and I could easily understand exactly how the trial will work.

Recently, I had an experience that solidified my gratitude for this service. During one of my mother's doctor appointments, information I received from Medivizor may have saved my mother from injury. Mom's doctor was laying out treatment plans, still getting pathology reports during the appointment; his head must have been spinning. His original plan was to give my mother Zometa.

I'd just received the synopsis of an article comparing Zometa and Xgeva, both medications for bone metastases. I remembered the synopsis warning that Zometa is not recommended for people with kidney problems. So, during the appointment, I asked my mom's doctor, "What about the fact that Mom only has one kidney?"

That information brought about a change in the treatment plan. Mom's oncologist is meticulous. I know he would have realized the issue with Zometa before she received any treatment, but with the commotion of incoming reports and our highly charged emotions, I felt empowered and educated—a team member in mom's care.

I'm beyond test runs—now I regularly use Medivizor. Our time with our doctors is limited. The information they send gives me the chance to make the best use of that time. I'm an active participant in my own care and, even more importantly, mom's too.

AnneMarie Ciccarella is a breast cancer patient advocate, six years post treatment, who uses the power and reach of social media to help others.

Medivizor Sends You and Your Doctor Personalized Health Information

A Sweet Life Feb 25, 2014

I don’t like messages “pushed” at me online. But I’ve found a resource – Medivizor.com – that does exactly that, yet benefits me. Medivizor sources the specific things I’m interested to learn more about in diabetes, and sends them directly to me.

Medivizor is a new and unique online health information service that personalizes health information for patients, caregivers and medical professionals, and sends it to you via email. The service is free and the information is specific and relevant to your condition, situation, needs and interests.

Currently, Medivizor covers over 400 conditions, including pre-diabetes, type 1, type 2 and gestational diabetes. It also covers the majority of cancers including breast, prostate, colorectal, lung, and melanoma, and cardiovascular diseases, and infertility and reproductive technologies.

The founders of Medivizor each came to realize, through personal experience, just how overwhelming and daunting finding relevant, specific, timely and understandable information can be. Further, most cutting-edge information is written for medical professionals and researchers, which makes it almost unintelligible for we mere humans trying to interpret clinical and research studies. Then there’s finding just what you’re looking for and knowing if what you find can be trusted. Finally, as the founders of Medivizor quickly discovered, staying up to date on information is difficult and enormously time-consuming.

Tal Givoly, Medivizor CEO, says when one becomes sick or a caregiver, they also immediately become a researcher. So much time and focus is spent on managing a disease, people shouldn’t have to become “chronic web researchers.”

Last year the American Diabetes Association guidelines changed, and now the strong recommendation for health care professionals is to treat people with diabetes individually, no more “one size treatment fits all.” Following more individualized treatment, it certainly makes sense that personalized health information will become increasingly necessary and regarded as a valuable tool.

How Medivizor works

You sign up on the site and answer several questions describing yourself and your medical condition(s). Behind the scenes, Medivizor uses patented technology. And with a panel of medical experts, gathers and parses, translates, updates and dispenses personalized health information relevant to you.

Medivizor sends you an email – typically one page of information written in layman’s terms with a capsule summary. Since Medivizor only sends what’s relevant to your specific situation, you may receive only two emails a month, or you may receive quite a few more.

You also receive additions and updates to the information as soon as they become available and notifications if information you’ve received is later deemed incorrect. Further, you can choose to send the information you receive to your doctor right from the site or discuss it with other Medivizor users.

It shouldn’t be surprising that today millions of Americans search for health information online. In fact, 85 million people are clicking away according to the Pew Research Center.

Steve Kaplan, MD and Chief Medical Officer of Medivizor, told me, “Perhaps the worst for doctors in this information age are patients who self-diagnose based on misinformation they read online. Many stop treatment and do themselves harm. Weekly, I’m treating confused and scared patients because of something they’ve read online that’s wrong or doesn’t apply to them.”

Another service of Medivizor is for those doctors who recommend the site to their patients. They’ll receive the same information that’s sent to their patients. Yet, they won’t see any of their patients’ personal profiles.

“For health care professionals up against the demands of staying on top of more than 5,000 research papers annually in their own specialty,” said Dr. Kaplan, “and huge amounts of information outside it, health professionals can now stay abreast of the latest developments and have information at their fingertips that applies to each of their patients. And, when doctors and their patients both have the same relevant information, it makes the office visit much more valuable.”

Medivizor doesn’t send quantities of static, established background information that you see on most sites like the American Diabetes Association, Mayo Clinic and WebMD. Givoly says, “We want to help you find the needle in the haystack, the thing that’s relevant for you, by sending dynamic, current information from trials, research and new findings.”

The advantage of specificity Givoly explained in this example: think about the significant difference between a fifteen year old active boy who has asthma and has just been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes searching for information and a twenty eight year old pregnant woman, who’s trying to keep her type 1 diabetes well managed during her pregnancy.

As Medivizor continues to grow and cover additional medical conditions, they want to learn what’s needed from you. If Medivizor doesn’t yet cover your medical condition, they ask you to sign up now so they will know where to expand their services. You’ll receive a notice when they do cover your condition.

Also, the service is HIPAA compliant and private. Your profile and information will not be shared.

“In the end,” says Dr. Kaplan, “we want patients to have a greater stake in their healthcare. We know those are the patients who do best.”

Disclosure: I have not been paid or compensated in any way for writing this post.

Riva Greenberg is a regular contributor to ASweetLife. She writes the blogMy Unexpected Muse.

Care Guidance Tools Create Better Patient Experiences

PSFK Labs Mar 04, 2014

Digital tools are guiding patients through care experiences and individual procedures ensuring a better end to end experience.

A side effect of the vast amounts of information at our disposal is the desire to know more. Our digital resources provide a seemingly infinite amount of data, but also raise new questions, which we may never have thought to consider in the first place. This is effect is only amplified when it comes to our own health, as new research about our symptoms or treatments might lead us down a rabbit hole of half truths and undue anxiety. In the latest Future of Health report, PSFK Labs noticed how a number of patient-centered services are helping alleviate this situation by arming individuals with timely guidance and support before, during and after their treatments.

Looking deeper into this idea, a number of services are ensuring a better end to end experience for patients by providing them with a digital portal that connects them to the amenities they will require during their hospital visit. For example the Seoul National University Bundang Hospital is a “Smart Hospital” offering a companion mobile app called ‘Patient Guide’ to visitors upon entry. The app was created in collaboration with SK Telecom to provide patients access to a multitude of IT-based medical services throughout their visit. As the patient enters the hospital, the app will handle the check-in process by pulling up patient records, scheduled appointments, expected waiting time, and costs. A GPS-based 3D map is also available to guide the patient to their appointment or next point-of-care. At the end of their visit, patients can pay their bill with the app as well. By incorporating familiar consumer technology with the patient support experience, the hospital wants to help patients gather more information on their visits, creating a more pleasant, empowered experience.

To alleviate anxiety, services can develop innovative ways to connect patients with the information that the need prior to a procedure. The UK-based company Kinosis created the Touchsurgery mobile app that walks patients through their procedures with interactive 3D visualization, easing pre-op anxiety. The developers, surgery residents themselves, initially intended the app as an educational tool for other surgeons-in-training, the app is free to download for patients curious about what they will be facing. Patients choose their procedure, which brings them to an extremely detailed simulation, where they are free to use virtual surgical tools to poke and cut their way through organs with the app providing feedback. Because most patients are unfamiliar with surgery procedures, and people generally experience stress going into unknown and risky situations, the app aims to calm their fears through desensitization. The effect could make patients feel more confident, retain a healthier mental state, and even recover faster.

As patients struggle to connect with the right information as they need it, new services are cropping up which are explaining available options, preparing them for upcoming procedures and ensuring adherence to necessary steps afterwards for recovery. One example is Medivizor, a digital service that provides chronic illness patients and caregivers with information updates tailored to their specific need. After patients complete the registration and describe their condition, the service promises to deliver curated news about clinical trials, treatment providers, research studies, and lifestyle tips, that are relevant, understandable, and actionable to enable patients to create their own treatment plans. The service currently offers information on 373 medical conditions covering 88% of cancer incidents, all of diabetes incidents, and 75% of cardiovascular disease incidents. The New York based company hopes to cut down some of the legwork for patients and caretakers who must wade through a daunting sea of resources to find the right care information. Having an automated service with tailored updates, eases stresses, empowers decision-making, and saves subscribers massive amounts of time and energy, which can be used to concentrate on recovery. A few thousand people have signed up for Medivizor, which has been in public beta since 2013; of those signed up 94% of users recommended Medivizor to a sick family member or friend.

Whether guiding patients through care experiences or individual procedures, these patient-centered information sources cater to patients with a desire to know more about their procedures and ensuring a better end to end experience.

With the help of our partner Boehringer Ingelheim, PSFK Labs has released the latest Future of Health Report, which highlights the four major themes and 13 emerging trends shaping the evolving global landscape of healthcare. To see more insights and thoughts on the Future of Health visit the PSFK page.

24 Entrepreneurs Explain Why They Started Their Businesses

HearPreneur / CEO Blog Nation Feb 24, 2014

Each business has a story. No matter if the business is a Goliath like Wal-Mart, or a local business owned by a couple or family, the business has roots in an idea. For each business owner, the story of their journey can range from monetary needs or the passion for a unique project. Each story is different though the reasons may remain the same. No matter the tale, the background behind each and every business is what fuels each and every brand.

To Battle Skin Cancer & Save Lives

SwimZip sun protective clothing was started after my diagnosis with skin cancer at age 26. Skin cancer is the leading cause of cancer in the US. I chose to follow my passion and make products that help keep people sun safe. My business of UPF 50+ swimwear and clothing allows me to pursue a livelihood that allows me to continue my battle with skin cancer and helps save lives.

I Was A Busy Mom

I’m a busy mom with an idea. Gandzee offers entire wardrobe collections and individual pieces for babies and kids ages 2 to 6-perfect for busy parents who want to buy a season’s worth of kids’ clothes with the click of a single button. The clothing is adorable and the quality is what you’d expect to find at a boutique or high-end department store. I was inspired to establish a kids’ clothing company that specializes in styling entire wardrobe collections as a direct result of being a busy mom and trying to dress my kids at the same time.

We Had a Pure Love for Ice Cream

In our opinion there is not much better than a day with ice cream. But what kind of ice cream? Can you really go wrong with any flavor? We don’t think so. And that’s why we created eCreamery.com and decided to turn the artistic scoop over to you, our customer! eCreamery Ice Cream & Gelato was founded out of a pure love for ice cream and the power of a personalized gift. We love the idea of making ice cream as a GIFT that will be bringing a smile to someone’s face and make a memory. Whether it’s Birthday Ice Cream, Get Well Ice Cream or Thank You Ice Cream, we want to make the moment delicious.

Passion for Street Travel & Global Design

I spent almost 7 years as a corporate lawyer before taking the leap and starting Project Bly, a website built on the philosophy that to really know a city, you must wander its streets. Project Bly came from a passion for street travel and global design.The first seed for Bly was planted when I spent several months looking for a one-of-a-kind rug with history and story. It grew after a trip to Sao Paulo where my online research for the best flea markets and street art resulted in over 20 open tabs on my computer. And then it all came together on a trip to Mumbai, where I spent hours wandering through the crowded street markets of this old trading city: Why weren’t there any travel sites focused on street culture?

To Solve A Problem for Myself

I started my business Hipzbag principally to solve a problem for myself. I was constantly losing, dropping or breaking my cell phone and, as a mom-on-the-go, I needed something to help make my phone easily accessible and protected. I looked for over a year and could not find anything that would suit my needs. I almost bought a fanny pack, but was just too cool for that! So I created Hipzbag. Hipzbag is the hands free and fashionable pouch that puts all of your essentials at your fingertips. With a built-in rear pocket that fits any cell phone, you’ll never have to worry about dropping your phone or missing a call. Since then my little idea has generated multi-million dollars in revenues and is growing every year.

I Didn’t Like the Products on the Market

I was a stay at home mom with two young girls and was mixing up oils and lotions for them because I really did not like any baby products available in the market. Either they were loaded with chemicals or if they were natural / organic they just did not smell very nice. I think we have changed that with our brand, Baby Mantra. All our products are certified natural and smell great! When my girls started going to school the other moms started taking some of my home made lotions and used them on their kids and loved them. That was when I knew this was something I needed to take to other moms. I got together with my sister, Vinnie, we incorporated and Baby Mantra was born! We initially launched on Amazon.com to test the response from consumers – and it absolutely floored us! Soon we were on Diapers.com, Walgreens.com and Drugstore.com. We got all our products NPA certified, introduced great looking packaging and have now started generating a buzz with large retailers.So the answer to your question in a nutshell: I was a mom who wanted my girls to have personal care products made with the purest ingredients possible but also pleasant to smell – and I was convinced other moms had to be feeling the same!

A Safe Haven for People with Injuries

Growing up I watched my dad suffer with debilitating back pain. He had numerous surgeries that failed and he ended up enduring pain for years. I began exercising to take care of my own spine, and eventually began personal training others that had their own issues. After working in health clubs for years, I was frustrated with the way the fitness industry (other personal trainers) treated those with back pain and other ailments. They didn’t seem to care about the person’s medical condition, and I couldn’t stand to watch it any longer. I set out to create Medical Fitness Pros, a place where people would feel safe no matter what injury or medical condition they were dealing with. It turns out there are many people who want to exercise and get in shape, but are dealing with a past medical issue and are afraid of being hurt worse. As we have grown the company we have focused on all of our staff studying and learning about various medical conditions and have been able to help many people in our community get in shape when they never thought they could. Being able to help others with this business is more rewarding than I ever could have imagined.

To be a Part of the Solution

In the early ’90s, unemployment was crushing our little town of Trinidad, Colorado, a community of about 10,000 in southern Colorado. The area’s major employer, the coal industry, was taking down its shingle and leaving town. After one particular soul-searching morning, my wife, Annie, and I resolved that we would stop talking about the problem and instead be a part of the solution. We sat down that day to figure out how we could combine our talents and create a local business. That was 1992. Today, Rendi, the child of our first company, Danielson Designs, continues to produce customizable photo frames, photo signs and decorative signs that are still made here in Trinidad. We’re proud that we’ve employed hundreds of our friends and neighbors over the last 20+ years.

I am Passionate about My Community

I have always been passionate about my community. As a lifelong resident, I believe by promoting and encouraging positive action, we will foster more positive action. Finding a way to “leave things better than you found them” has been a goal of mine, instilled by my parents. Four years ago, I launched a lifestyle magazine promoting greater Prince William, both to its residents and others: Prince William Living. This lifestyle magazine celebrates the arts, businesses, activities and people behind our quality of life. It tells the story of greater Prince William, celebrating triumphs and encouraging residents to enjoy and support their community. Being able to help create a positive outlook drives me every day and makes me happy. Each day brings new challenges and exciting announcements. I get to meet new people all the time and learn about what others are passionate about. I get to work with top notch team of dynamic, creative people who have similar goals of community service. It allows me to have the flexibility I need for my family while touching many more lives than I could by myself. In the end, your body of work should speak for itself. I hope that mine will be a legacy of giving and service.

I Lost My Job

I worked in Management roles since I was 23 after years and developing the companies bottom line. I had learn a wide range of skills. I wanted to follow my passion and work in the outdoors. I took on a challenge to Climb Mt. Everest and raise $100,000 to build the Mt. Everest Primary school in Uganda with a friend of mine. Off the back of Climbing Everest I lost my job and vowed to set up my own business. I now own and run my own worldwide travel business managing groups and teams trekking and hiking around the world. I also speak internationally and an ambassador for the charity Fields of Life. This was the best decision I have ever made, challenging but a rewarding way to spend my time. I get to travel meet new people and see change at the Everest school which our company supports.

To Contribute at a Higher Level

I found the market was lacking any products that were 1) useful and 2) a way to contribute and give back to a cause. Thusly OriginalBOS was born. Our first product was Balls of Steel whiskey coolers. Essential it’s a merge of a cause supportive awareness campaign and extremely useful to chill drinks better than ice without diluting the flavor is tap water from ice melt.

There Was No Information Available to Consumers of Alcoholic Beverages

Alcoholic beverage suppliers are not required to provide health or nutrition information to consumers. Even standard nutritional facts such as sugar and calories are not required. Furthermore, the only taste rating system available to consumers of wine, beer and spirits is subjective. Using this current rating system, an “expert” tells consumers what “they” like based on a 100 point scale…not blindly I may add. Considering that 67% of Americans consume wine, beer or spirits, we saw a real need. So, we hired a PhD in chemistry, purchased $1 million worth of lab equipment and are testing wines, beers and spirits for health and flavor compounds. Now, health-conscious consumers can visit our site and find alcoholic beverage low in calories, sugar, sulfites and heavy metals (e.g. lead and arsenic). Or they can find beverages high in antioxidants, vitamins and also, those that are free of common allergens like gluten. For the more taste-conscious consumer, we offer our Copy Cat taste comparison system. Copy Cat allows consumers to discover nearly identical beverages to their favorites based on the similarities of taste and aroma compounds. This disruptive information is provided freely to the public at BeverageGrades.com.

To Break my Comfort Zone and Dream Big

My company equips individual investors with stock analysis tools to make stock analysis and valuation quick and easy at an affordable price. The kicker is that I have no finance, business, investing and coding background. There was pushback from family and friends about the risks involved with growing a htake the business further. Unfortunately, their advice focused on “safety” and “stability. It was completely different advice to people who were already successfully running their own businesses. So I decided to ignore the “safe” advice from family and learned to trust myself and what the business numbers were telling me. That first step completely smashed my comfort zone and has helped me to become a big dreamer, not afraid of testing new ideas.

2 Reasons

I started my business for 2 simple reasons: 1) I hated working for other people, and 2) I saw a major problem in the industry I was working. There is nothing more frustrating to an intelligent and hard-working person than to witness malfunctions occurring in an industry. The lazy ones sit and watch them occur, the ambitious ones think of a solution, the crazy ones actually try to solve them. However, there is nothing more rewarding in this world than to create a scalable solution that makes millions of lives faster, better or easier.

Every Child Should Look Adorable on their Special Day

I founded Black n Bianco children’s formal wear because I wanted to provide affordable children’s formal wear. As a mother of three it was difficult trying to find a tuxedo or suit for my sons because of the prices. A regular generic boys suit would cost well over $100 dollars. It was hard trying to justify that price when they would only wear it once or twice if lucky. I saw a need and decided to start my own children’s formal wear line. By offering affordable children’s formal wear, Black n Bianco was created. With time we were able to find the best quality fabric for our suits without overpricing our products. Now every child no matter what background they come from can own a pair of boys suit.

There was a Fight

I was producing a weekly MMA program for a cable network and at one of the events two of the ring girls got into a fight. Apparently it was over who would get to enter the cage during the main event when the biggest television audience would be watching. Fists started flying and suddenly every eyeball in the place was glued to these two attractive girls fighting - no one cared about the two guys in the cage anymore. As people tried to pull the girls off each other I thought to myself, ‘That right there is a winner’. The next day I started pitching Lingerie Fighting Championships to cable systems and 200 systems later I still haven’t heard a no. Our next event is April 11 at 9pm ET / 6pm PT.

To Offer the World More

If I really look back over my “professional” career, I remember the big, and realistic, ideas that were grounded because the powers that be felt they were too innovative, too over the top, and too aggressive. However, what I was recognized for and were some of my most significant achievements over the course of my professional career were the result of my innovative, over the top and aggressive ideas. At some point, you simply realize that you have more to offer the world. When you get to that point, the desire to get up everyday to work for someone else is simply not there. When I reached that point, I knew that I had to exit for my own sanity. I had ideas that I wanted to execute, without limitations and fear from others. My business was birthed out of frustration and a desire to make a greater impact around the world.

I Noticed a Problem

I’ve been doing some form of web development for almost 20 years, but as the technologies have gotten more complex, I started noticing a problem: web designers were limiting their visions to what they knew how to code. Because they can’t realistically keep up with all the advances in both design and development, they were forced to make compromises. When I realized my development experience was exactly what they needed to have true creative freedom, I knew I’d found my niche.

To Scratch My Itch

I was running an online lead generation company which involved using teams in the Philippines to generate leads for my clients on the internet. I wanted a simple way to quickly create procedure documents and track as my staff completed them. I couldn’t find the product anywhere, so I build it! I thought that if I had a need for it, surely others would too, and I was right. Now thousands of companies from all around the world use Process Street to manage their Standard Operating Procedures.

It Was Needed & There Was A Gap

I thought that women needed the service and that there was a gap in the market for it. MyBeautyCompare offers customers personalized recommendations based on their age, skin type, hair type and lifestyle. They are then able to use the price comparison feature, the first of its kind for beauty, to get the best deal that suits them. I saw this concept to be very useful for women with a busy lifestyle as it saves them time and research to find out what beauty products are suitable for them.

To Help Save Lives

I first realized there’s something wrong with online health information when my best friends were coping with their daughter’s leukaemia. They spent hours sorting through the information found on the Internet! For people who are coping with serious conditions such as cancer, information can save lives. But while there’s plenty of great information out there, very quickly this body of information becomes overwhelming. It’s not clear what is credible and can be trusted, what applies to a particular case of interest and what is current. Also, staying abreast of the latest developments is nearly impossible, but even worse, most of the cutting-edge information is written for medical professionals, most people can’t understand at all. I truly realized the magnitude of this problem when I shared this with some of my friends who also had a similar experience: Oren, who lost his mother to cancer, figured there must be a better way; one should cherish the time with his loved ones instead of wasting it going over endless piles of irrelevant data. Steve, as a top physician, shared his daily experience with patients, coming with piles of information they found on the web, disappointed to find out that often it was not relevant to their specific case and more ominously simply wrong. Our joint passion and innovative spirit drove us to make it happen. We set about to revolutionize health information by making it personal.We founded Medivizor with the fundamental belief that people have the right to be informed about the best health information out there – trustworthy, free, state-of-the-art, understandable, and, most importantly, relevant to their specific situation – namely, health information, now personalized.

To Create A Unique Business

I started Anthem in 1999 because I wanted to create a unique business. I thrive on the ability to create and I see business as an art in many ways. I can create concepts that are enjoyable and fun, profitable and worthwhile, or both, which can help people on various levels depending on which type of client they are. This creativity I enjoy also goes hand in hand with energy, pace and ambition. I want to define how Anthem moves and progresses, and now as the company is reaching another maturity stage, it can move (almost) as fast as I want it to. Another reason I started Anthem was to have freedom – not freedom in the sense of doing only whatever I want, but freedom to move in different directions whenever appropriate. Yes, there is a great sense of empowerment and responsibility that comes with this freedom, but it is something I truly enjoy. Finally, I love having the ability to shape the environment around me. This can mean anything from building our team to shaping our culture. I absolutely LOVE to be surrounded by like-minded individuals. I started the business to create a new culture and day-to-day environment. There is essentially no ceiling on what we want to do and I love that Anthem has given me that freedom.

Breaking Into A Blossoming Billion Dollar Industry

After graduating from college, I worked in the floral industry for three years, designing arrangements for weddings and managing a staff of 4 employees. My titles included head designer and new business development manager. I was very passionate about creating arrangements, loved using my artistic talents, and greatly valued the day-to-day client interactions; somehow I still felt unfulfilled. After doing some research, I discovered that the floral industry is extremely profitable; a 6 billion dollar a year industry and rapidly growing. I realized there was an untapped market in the B2B floral delivery, since there is such a heavy focus on weddings and personal arrangements. I pitched the B2B idea to several of my business mentors, and received positive feedback. Taking a huge leap of faith, in 2013, I created EJ Blooms, a floral design company in the largest US market…and I haven’t looked back since.

Leverage Technology to Bring People Closer

Just after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, I went to Biloxi, MS to offer help to those impacted by the disaster. Once there, Red Cross told me my services weren’t needed because they had plenty of help. I felt helpless and decided to rent a truck so I could drive around the area and pass out care packages to people I met along the way. This experience inspired Givatude, as I became interested in how small, meaningful exchanges can create an instantaneous bond between people. My co-founder, Shamik Desai, and I believe technology is doing an amazing job connecting people, but not necessarily bringing them closer. We wanted to start a company that leveraged technology to create bonds between people. Givatude enables individuals to send small, meaningful gifts and experiences to people anytime from merchants in their community. We believe giving and gifting should be fun, convenient, and frequent–Givatude makes all of that possible.

Catching up with Medivizor

Telehealth & Telecare Aware Apr 02, 2014

By: Donna Cusano

This Editor had a quick catchup this week with Medivizor’s CEO and co-founder, Tal Givoly, at the introduction of Eco-Fusion (a personalized wellness/tech fusion service founded by Dr. Oren Fuerst, Medivizor executive chairman and co-founder; more on this when it goes to market). One of the better discoveries of our July 2013 CE Week NYC coverage and the H20NYC/Healthcare Pioneers evening [TTA 3 July], Medivizor’s USP is that it provides free, personalized, research-level information on serious or chronic health conditions based on specific user information. The user benefit is increasing pertinence to the specific condition and less time spent researching. Still in what they term a ‘public beta’, they have expanded (as promised) to cover 400 medical conditions in 10 domains, such as cancer, cardiovascular, infertility and diabetes, and are growing their community of users and forum interactions. Medivizor has also published a compendium of 10 of the most important breast cancer research papers published in 2013 into a free eBook.

Product Update: New Service from IVF-Worldwide

OBG Management Mar 26, 2014

NEW SERVICE FROM IVF-WORLDWIDETargeted treatment and clinical trial information is available through IVF-Worldwide, a broad-based, open-access journal that publishes current information on in vitro fertilization (IVF), genetics, and stem cell therapy. Physicians and clinics can now offer information to patients through a cooperative agreement between IVF-Worldwide and Medivizor, an Internet platform that provides consumer-based medical information.FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISITwww.ivf-worldwide.com

Niche players

Jerusalem Post Mar 19, 2014

Niche players

From bloodless circumcision to personalized medical searches, Israeli medical entrepreneurs are coming up with ideas to solve unmet problems

by Bernard Dichek

Business

WHEN OREN Fuerst was caring for his late mother, he ran into a problem familiar to many people who have Googled medical treatments on the Internet. “There’s just too much information out there and it took hours to pinpoint the articles relevant to my mother’s particular condition,” says Fuerst, a serial medical entrepreneur.

Fuerst’s frustrations led him to found Medivizor, a personalized service that enables users to receive articles related to specific conditions from leading medical journals. To get the information they need, users fill out a brief questionnaire and then Medivizor’s search engine retrieves the relevant articles, all of which have been summarized into laymen’s terms.

Fuerst is one of many Israeli life science entrepreneurs, who have come up with ideas to solve problems in specific niches.

Medivizor is not the only company started by Fuerst. CircMedTech offers a practical way to get adult African males circumcised.

“After a World Health Organization study showed that in Sub-Saharan Africa, circumcised men had a 76 percent reduced chance of getting the HIV virus, healthcare agencies tried to encourage circumcision as a preventive measure,” says Fuerst, who spent several years working in the African healthcare industry. “But it turned out to be very difficult to convince African men to have their most precious organ put under a local anesthetic and to give up several days of work while recovering,” he adds, referring to conventional surgical procedures.

CircMedTech’s solution is the PrePex, a device that enables circumcision by means of a bloodless procedure that can be performed without the need for anesthesia. “Using radial elastic pressure to compress the foreskin, the device cuts off blood supply until the unwanted foreskin tissue dies and is safely removed after a week,” explains Fuerst.

The device has already been successfully used on 10,000 men in 10 different countries, with six clinical trials successfully carried out. Rwanda recently announced plans to scale up use of the device. Some 700,000 PrePex procedures are planned in the next few years.

The PrePex kit sells for $20 and can be applied by non-medical staff who undergo a brief training course. “It is much simpler and far less expensive than surgical incisions,” says Fuerst, citing figures from a major AIDS-preventiongroup indicating that it would cost more than $1.5 billion to carry out 20 million circumcisions in Africa using the conventional method.

Fuerst notes that the PrePex kit will do more than just reduce costs. “This is probably the only way countries can rapidly scale up circumcision campaigns and in so doing save the lives of numerous men who otherwise wouldn’t get circumcised.”

SciVac is another Israeli company that is trying to fill an unmet medical niche – an effective vaccine for the deadly hepatitis B virus (HBV), which is 100 times more infectious than HIV.

An estimated 400 million people, mainly in the developing world, are believed to be carriers of HBV, which destroys the liver and is responsible for more than a million deaths every year.

In most countries in the West, an HBV vaccine is given to newborns within hours of birth. “But about 10 percent of newborn babies and 25 percent of adults over 40 do not respond to the HBV vaccines in common use,” explains Lemuel Melamed, SciVac’s business development manager. Consequently, he adds, many people in Western countries are unprotected against the virus, and at risk of contracting it, particularly those who travel in the developing world and medical staff who are at high risk of

(Far left) CircMedTech‘s Oren Fuerst showing the PrePex device in his computer; (left) Gary Grosman, founder of Global Medical Services, was inspired by the Israel Air Force combat search and rescue unit seen on the preceding pages bringing a wounded soldier to hospital exposure in hospitals.

In the 1990s, a group of scientists at the Weizmann Institute, led by Prof. Yossi Shaul, developed a vaccine that could solve this problem. “The vaccine is effective on almost 100 percent of the population because it comprises all three envelope proteins of the native virus, compared with just one protein in the older vaccine,” says Melamed, noting that ever since successful clinical trials were conducted in 1992 in Israel, the new vaccine, today called Sci-B-Vac, has been given to Israeli newborns.

GETTING THE Sci-B-Vac vaccine into markets outside Israel, however, has proven more difficult. The American and European regulatory agencies haven’t approved it yet because clinical trials have not been conducted in the US or Europe, and other countries tend to follow the example of the US and the EU.

Until recently, the owners of the vaccine technology, including several different biotech companies, couldn’t afford the heavy costs involved in conducting a US trial, and consequently the huge global marketing potential has been untapped.

Recently, however, a new group of seasoned pharmaceutical industry investors acquired the technology and began to raise the funds needed to conduct a US trial.

The new investors include FDS Pharma and Opko Health, which is headed by Phillip Frost, the multi- millionaire chairman of the board at Teva Pharmaceuticals. SciVac is currently racing Sci-B-Vac through a US clinical trial, to be completed in about 18 months. Once that is achieved, Sci-B-Vac can be expected to be rapidly adopted by countries across the globe.

A veteran and a volunteer of the elite Israel Air Force combat search and rescue unit, he has participated in numerous life-saving missions following terrorist attacks against Israelis and other disasters in places such as Kenya, Jordan, Turkey, Bulgaria, and other countries. During a recent visit of US President Barack Obama, Grosman was part of the local emergency medical team on hand for the guest and his entourage. He also was requested to provide medical support for abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit when he was released from captivity and brought home.

To demonstrate the types of conditions under which he honed his skills, Grosman screens a video that he uses to train IDF paramedics. “I call this the Flight to Hell,” says Grosman, explaining that it was recorded some years ago when he flew on a helicopter mission to rescue wounded Israeli soldiers in Lebanon. A missile comes straight at the aircraft and is only a few meters away when it is deflected by the anti-missile system. Just before the helicopter lands, a second missile comes dangerously close.

“The adrenalin was really flowing even before we hit the ground,” recalls Grosman. As the helicopter touches down, he and the rest of his medical team rush out of one side to bring in a soldier on a stretcher and begin trauma treatment. In the meantime, on the other side, the crew tosses out supplies to commandos engaged in a gun battle. “Barely 30 seconds after landing, we were back in the sky,” recalls Grosman.

His first venture into commercializing battlefield medical skills came during the 1990s, when he set up emergency medicine simulation centers in several countries in the former Soviet Union. “I started out in Eastern Europe because I knew there was a shortage of training facilities there and, of course, being able to speak Russian helped,” says Grosman, who was born in the Ukraine and immigrated to Israel in 1976.

After 9/11 created a demand for preparation in handling mass casualty incidents in the US, Grosman began to train American emergency teams. Showing a slide of a workshop for 800 medical personnel carried out in Texas, he points out how mannequins were used to simulate the treatment of victims in an emergency tent.

Grosman recently established another company known as the Aeromedical Group to improve emergency medical services at airports and on airplanes. He notes that most airports have no infrastructure for advanced emergency medical treatments and airline staff often lack emergency medical training.

“When a passenger undergoes a medical crisis during a flight, airplanes often need to make emergency landings, at a great cost to the airline companies,” he points out. “But if the airline staff could get professional training, the inconvenience could be prevented and there would be a greater chance of saving the life of the passenger.”

Grosman, like his fellow niche entrepreneurs, is optimistic that his new venture will follow in the same lucrative footsteps as other Israeli medical success stories in recent years. One of them, Given Imaging, a company that built its business solely on an innovation for viewing the small intestine, was recently sold for about $900 million.

eMed's 6 to follow in entrepreneurship

eMed Dec 01, 2013

By Ryan Amin

Many things can make you a better entrepreneur. But here's one that certainly helps: networking. So every week eMed is going to highlight some healthcare and life science entrepreneurs on twitter you should consider following. This is not an endorsement, but an encouragement. Entrepreneurship is better when everyone joins the conversation. So please join us by following @emedcommunity and participating on eMed at Entrepreneurship.org.

I Have Lynch Syndrome Mar 07, 2014

Well, I took a much-needed rest these past few days. I’ve been suffering from migraines due to the cold around here; this has to be one of the longest, coldest, and worst winters in Chicago. My poor little dog, Sid, doesn’t even want to go outside anymore. He’s a Jack-Chi (Jack Russell/Chihuahua) and even he is getting depressed because it’s simply too cold for us to be spending anytime outside. Hopefully the weather will improve within the next week or so. It’s been a very long winter in Chicago. Spring cannot come soon enough.

I was thrilled to have Miss Eileen Grubba share her video with us on Monday; she’s certainly a beacon of love, positivity, and health. She and I try to inspire previvors to live their best lives; we know that many people without colons cannot follow a vegan or vegetarian diet – they simply don’t have the mechanisms required to process a highly fibrous plant-based diet. But most with a colon certainly can and should. A recent article in Scientific American discusses meat consumption in middle-aged people and how it has been shown to cause cancer.

Going vegan is difficult, especially when you love cheese and yogurt as much as I do; I recommend making small changes every week. For example, stop eating read meat one week, then cut back on the white meats the following week. Try substituting dairy products with other coconut, hemp, or nut-milk based alternatives. You will notice pretty quickly that you feel much better and more energetic. I still cook meat for my family and I cannot tell you what an act of love that is for me, especially since I don’t eat it. I get nauseated just walking through the meat department at the grocery store. I religiously talk to my husband and son about changing their diets but they are not interested. They love their meat and potatoes so I try to make them in the healthiest way possible. I don’t know how much longer I can cook the meat for them. Handling meat truly disgusts me.

From John Robbins, a new edition of the classic that awakened the conscience of a nation. Since the 1987 publication of Diet for a New America, beef consumption in the United States has fallen a remarkable 19%. While many forces are contributing to this dramatic shift in our habits, Diet for a New America is considered to be one of the most important. Diet for a New America is a startling examination of the food we currently buy and eat in the United States, and the astounding moral, economic, and emotional price we pay for it. (http://www.amazon.com/Diet-New-America-John-Robbins/dp/0915811812)

Like many young Americans, Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his teenage and college years oscillating between enthusiastic carnivore and occasional vegetarian. As he became a husband, and then a father, the moral dimensions of eating became increasingly important to him. Faced with the prospect of being unable to explain why we eat some animals and not others, Foer set out to explore the origins of many eating traditions and the fictions involved with creating them.

Traveling to the darkest corners of our dining habits, Foer raises the unspoken question behind every fish we eat, every chicken we fry, and every burger we grill. Part memoir and part investigative report, Eating Animals is a book that, in the words of the Los Angeles Times, places Jonathan Safran Foer “at the table with our greatest philosophers.” (http://www.amazon.com/Eating-Animals-Jonathan-Safran-Foer/dp/0316069884)

Both books can be found on Amazon used for under $5 plus shipping. I pride myself on being an environmentalist and Buddhist. I truly don’t believe you can deem yourself as an environmentalist when you consume animal products – meat and animal product production are the most environmentally degrading practices on the planet. Besides, as a Buddhist, I take my Buddhist prayers of “doing no harm to living beings” very seriously. Eating animal products is a health issue but also holds huge implications for our morality and ethics.

Our current practices of meat production in this country are unsustainable; they are bad for the animals, the environment, our health, and our humanity. We really need to be more mindful in what we put into our bodies and how it affects other beings and things. Everything on this beautiful, giving Earth of ours in interconnected and yet we fail miserably to see this. I truly believe there is a positive correlation between the Earth’s health and our own.

One more thing before I end…have you noticed the Medivizor ad on the left of the website? It’s a terrific resource for all us dealing with Lynch syndrome and other health issues.

If you have a serious or chronic medical condition, Medivizor can help. Sign up for free to receive information and subsequent updates about cutting-edge research,treatment options, relevant clinical trials, and more – personalized just for you.

I highly recommend you sign up for their medical updates. You won’t need a medical degree in order to understand the research, treatment options, and the clinical trials they discuss; but most importantly Medivizor will help you become a better advocate for your own health.

New eBook: Top 2013 Breast Cancer Papers

Medivizor Mar 26, 2014

Medivizor experts selected some of the most important breast cancer research papers published in 2013 and compiled the service’s summaries and interpretations of them into an eBook. This eBook is now available to be downloaded free.

Doctors 2.0 & You Apr 28, 2014

Announcing Doctors 2.0 & You Start-up Contest start-up finalists for the 4th edition on June 5-6, 2014 in Paris.

Paris, France April 28, 2014. Doctors 2.0 & You, “THE international healthcare social media conference in Europe, “announced today the names of the digital health start-up candidates who will compete in the start-up contest, June 5-6, 2014 on the campus of Cité Universitaire Internationale in Paris.

The finalists hail from Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, Spain.

These seven digital health companies, all under three years of age, cover the categories of: online services for patients, patient online community, professional social network, connected objects, quantified self, mobile applications.

The contest is a demonstration of the Doctors 2.0 & You partnership with Stanford Medicine X. The first place winner of the Doctors 2.0 & You contest will have the opportunity to presenthis or her pitch in Palo Alto California, on September 7 at Doctors 2.0 & You sister conference, Stanford Medicine X, in the presence of Denise Silber, Doctors 2.0 & You founder.

Sharing a very similar vision with Denise Silber, regarding the importance of digital health innovation for patients and professionals, Dr Larry Chu, Executive Director of Stanford Medicine X, will chair the start-up contest session. The jury members will be announced on June 2. According to Dr Larry Chu“Doctors 2.0 & You’s main objective is to bring stakeholders, patients and healthcare providers and researchers together and to unite and work closely on global healthcare issues. This initiative truly carries great potential for the future of healthcare. I’m very proud to work closely, as partners, with Denise Silber and Doctors 2.0 & You and in particular to chair the start-up contest session .”

Denise Silber remarked that “These seven digital health companies are going further than everto present well thought out, yet disruptive products and services. The discussions with the start-ups in the sessions and in the exhibit hall will give them great feedback and new opportunities for our participants. We are also so happy to have the support of Larry Chu and Stanford Medicine X.”

About Doctors 2.0 & You The Doctors 2.0TM & You conference series, organized by Basil Strategies, digital health consultancy (Paris), is the only international congress devoted to the understanding of how physicians use New Technologies, Web 2.0 tools and Social Media to communicate with colleagues, patients, payers, pharmaceutical companies and public agencies. The 4th edition will take place in Paris on June 5-6, 2014. The conference website and blog includes videos, past presentations, interviews, and other content. See http://www.doctors20.com.

Healthspek Partners With Medivizor to Personalize Health Info

Medivizor & Healthspek May 08, 2014

As personal health management app developer Healthspek and personalized health information provider Medivizor prepare to showcase their revolutionary products to thousands of attendees at AARP’s Health Innovation@50+ Expo this week, the companies are rolling out a partnership to further enhance their users’ experience.

“People who have become seriously ill or suffer from ongoing medical conditions often become ‘chronic web researchers,’ but the process of finding relevant, trustworthy and understandable information online is extremely ineffective and inefficient,” said Medivizor Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder Ronen Keinan. “Our mission is to improve the lives of people with serious medical conditions and those who care for them by providing truly relevant and personalized information to help them manage their day-to-day care.”

Healthspek was launched in 2013 as a free iPad App that can be used to track, collect and safely disseminate personal healthcare information. Users can securely manage their medical records, immunizations, conditions, providers and insurance, all with the swipe of a finger. Parents and guardians can include their family members under the same account. Users have 24/7 access to their entire health record from anywhere in the world, and can grant access to their care providers. A physical carry card includes users’ critical health information in case of emergency.

Last year, Healthspek was featured in the App Store’s Best New Medical Apps, was listed as a Top-Five Best Medical and Health Care app by Tab Times, and won MediaPost’s 2013 Appy Award in the medical category. The company plans to release Healthspek versions for iPhone, Android and Windows-based platforms this summer.

Healthspek was selected as one of 10 startups to participate in AARP’s Health Innovation @50+ LivePitch event in Boston on May 9, a showcase of the hottest new products in the “50 and over” health technology market, offering access not only to venture capitalists and angel investors but to 15,000 members and guests from across the globe.

“We believe the future of healthcare interconnectivity will be patient-driven, and our partnership with Medivizor underscores the power of relevant information to personal health management,” said Healthspek Chief Executive Officer Randy Farr. “This new functionality is all about the personalization of credible health information delivered in a format that users can understand and act upon.”

The Medivizor solution combines patent-pending technology, medical expertise, and the wisdom of the crowd to filter and summarize all current reliable information to just that which relates to individual Healthspek users based on a host of individual criteria. As the latest of over a dozen user-selected “speks,” or tools, the Medivizor functionality will be rolled out in May.

Making The Most of Social Media After a Cancer Diagnosis

Coming Together to Fight Cancer May 14, 2014

If and or when you or someone you love gets diagnosed with a disease you are going to have a lot of questions. And as mentioned in a previous blog, Doctors Aren’t Gods, it is inadvisable to blindly turn over your trust to a doctor. Even if you do, they may advise you about choices that you have, and the more and better informed you are, the better position you will be in to make a choice that is in line with your wishes.

If you google search things like cancer, heart disease or diabetes, you’ll get over 200 million responses in less than .3 seconds (assuming a good broadband/DSL internet connection). In about the same amount of time, I made a more specific request and searched for stage II lung cancer and received over 8 million results.

So, there is a lot of information out there. How do you organize and collate it? First, if diagnosed with cancer, read this. Next, you can start to organize information through social media. I’ll get to the usual suspects in a moment, but I want to mention a newer player first.Medivizor. Medivizor acts as your own personal e-Newsletter. You can sign up on their site for free, create a profile and input specific information about your age, gender, and diagnosis. Medivizor will then organize a listing of relevant articles for you to read and email you every time something new comes in to them.

As a newer site, it doesn’t have every type of cancer listed, but it is worth a look. In addition to cancer, it also covers heart disease and diabetes. So if you know someone dealing with those illnesses, please pass on the link to them if you think it appropriate. While Medivizor is promising, by no means is it all-inclusive at this point. I would still consider using other sources as well.

In addition to questions, you may have financial needs that only add to the stress of your illness. Another site you may not have heard is gofundme.com. This is a crowdfundingwebsite where you can set up a site for free and raise money to help pay for your care. You can see a video demo of how it works by clicking here.

If you are already using sites like Twitter and Facebook and have hundred or thousands of “friends”, you may want to set up a new page just for your diagnosis. This way when you sign in, your news feed or listing of information, will only be related to your diagnosis, and you will not have to sort through the minutia of all of your “friend’s” postings.

When adding your diagnosis/ social media pages, I would suggest looking up U.S. News rankings for top cancer hospitals in the country. Remember, they have an overall list for cancer in general, and specific lists for different types of cancer. When you find the best for what you have been diagnosed with, check out their websites if they have one, and consider “following” or “liking” them on their social media pages. Many tend to send out (“tweet”) potentially helpful links to articles.

To help get you started, below are some websites, with their twitter names that could be of possible interest. Some I have been to, others I just looked up for this blog. So do your own research, you may know or find other cancer, social media, or crowdfunding sites that are better for you. In some cases the websites might have great information for you but the twitter pages, not so much. That is why I provided the links for both.

If you do not see your type of cancer represented below you can do your own internet search or call places like the American Cancer Society or MD Anderson and ask for recommendations.

No need to join hundreds of sites… But if you can find some specific to your type of cancer, i.e., lung or breast, and some for cancer in general, i.e., MD Anderson or John Hopkins, and check it periodically, you may find it helpful and time-saving.

MedCity News May 16, 2014

In a bid to boost health literacy and to improve the interactions between physicians and patients, Medivizor has massively expanded its healthcare content platform for patients in the past year and has added some interesting collaborations.

It has expanded its content generation platform from a handful of diseases such as diabetes, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer and breast cancer to include more than 400 medical conditions. It’s also working with several clinics that “prescribe” Medivizor to their patients. Among the medical institutions it is working with are Lowell General Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center.

It also works with nonprofits focused on melanoma, colon cancer and diabetes.

The New York-based company’s personalized content system is not only geared to people who have been diagnosed with a medical condition. Caregivers are also part of the target audience. Users are sent information in a multimedia format tailored to their condition. They can work through the information at their own pace. More than 50 percent of users are active three months after signing up.

Whenever a research paper or article is published from a recognized source like a medical journal it gets sent to the Medivizor site. The team then decides which content is most relevant to which subscribers. The content is geared to a Flesch-Kincaid reading level of 10 to 12 — a high school reading level — so it’s not overly simplistic, but it doesn’t assume you’ve been studying pre-med.

Interview with Medivizor's CEO Tal Givoly

mHealthSpot May 29, 2014

mHealth Spot had a chance to interview Medivizor's CEO Tal Givoly and ask him few questions about his business.

Mr. Givoly has over 25 years of systems and software development experience, and has held a number of management positions at Amdocs, XACCT, MIS and other companies. He has a proven track record in "realizing visions," both in startups from inception and in multinational corporations.

Here's how that interview went:

How would you pitch Medivizor? Which problem(s) does it solve?

When people become sick with a serious or chronic illness such as cancer or diabetes, someone becomes what we call a "chronic web researcher". They start seeking everything and anything that might help themselves or their loved one. However, this process today is broken. Why? Well, they head out to Dr. Google and end up with millions of results. They don't know what they can trust, what's current, what's not a quack or primarily trying to sell them something, they certainly don't know what's relevant to them. And, if they do further research, soon they are confronted with the barrier of their own knowledge as most of the cutting-edge scientific material is written for scientists. Not mere mortals. Medivizor fixes this problem by providing a state of the art of science for YOU followed by updates as science evolves. All this in 10th grade English explained and interpreted in a way that makes it relatively easy to understand discuss with your medical team.

How Medivizor does its magic?

Behind the scenes of Medivizor there's a combination of patent-pending technology, medical expertise, and the wisdom of the crowd that power the site and service. This technology goes well beyond keyword-based search by semantically matching information to people profiles. The system establishes a profile for every individual using the service, whether the patient, the caregiver, or a physician enters the profile. The system begins with clinically relevant, best evidence of data from the most reputable sources and ends up with succinct and understandable summaries that people can understand.

What sets you apart from competing solutions?

Well, thus far, health information and patient education is "generic". Basically, it is material brought online for general consumption and not tailored to individuals. It is overwhelming in quantity and ultimately up to the reader to discern what applies to them, what they can trust, what's current, etc. Medivizor is really the first company to make it personal. That is, rather than overwhelming majority of the results not applying to you – with Medivizor, nearly all the results do apply to you. Also, rather than patients, caregivers, or doctors searching for the information themselves, we provide it straight to their inbox (avoiding the need to search) just the information personally relevant to the individual. Also, we're unique in the breadth of information: It's not just one type of information such as clinical trials. We deliver cutting-edge research, clinical trials, guidelines, lifestyle tips, community resources, and more. We also continue then to keep you abreast of all the latest developments, affording the peace of mind that we got you covered. To best of our knowledge, no other product, service, or tool does any of these, let alone all of them. Also, our solution is rather unique in that it infuses the wisdom of the crowd – the actions and reactions of the users, into the result of the service itself.

Can you share some numbers? How many users do you have?

We have several thousands of users from over 50 different countries, however, since the service is currently only available in English, and only supporting a limited number of important medical conditions, these are early days and we're still growing.

Medivizor is free, but on your website it is stated that a paid option will be launched in the future? Can you tell us more about it?

We intend to keep the basic service free. We believe we can generate revenue to sustain and grow the business without necessarily making this extremely valuable service a paid service. We may, over time, add premium services for the patients/caregivers, which will be optional. An example of a premium service might be a review by a doctor or a telemedicine appointment or some other value add we might provide.

Aside from the premium services, where else do you see Medivizor going?

In the future we intend to expand the list of supported medical conditions and continue to attract new subscribers. Since part of what Medivizor work is that it is powered by the wisdom of the crowd, the more people use our service, the better the service becomes to all. We anticipate our main revenue would be through referrals or licensing to third parties and medical institutions – all this without compromising privacy of individuals.

Where do you see the mHealth industry going?

The piece of technology people are most connected to these days is their smartphone. This is a nearly limitless platform for innovation, especially when coupled with web and cloud based services. We have barely scratched the surface of what we will see. It's going to be very bright indeed. The smartphone + "appcessories" + cloud will become a very powerful platform for innovation.

Medivizor is a global platform for health information and patient education. It has raised seed capital of over $1M from investors and its founders. The company’s leadership is based in New York and Israel and team members and contributors are worldwide.

How a diverse team leads to better access

eMed / Entrepreneurship.org Jun 03, 2014

Access -- to providers, patients, payers, or anyone who can make a healthcare startup successful -- is a sticking point for many early-stage entrepreneurs. Building a diverse team has helped Medivizor, a startup that provides a personalized digest of state-of-the-art science for people with chronic conditions, find a variety of ways to connect with key stakeholders, said co-founder and CEO Tal Givoly.

Some team members reach out via social media, Givoly said, while others favor face-to-face networking. Seeking access on a variety of fronts helps the team quickly determine the best methods to access stakeholders, he said. "Otherwise you need to serially do all these different experiments," Givoly said. "This way we learn faster what works."

Here are other entrepreneurial insights from Givoly:

Make it easy for users to give feedback -- Medivizor has users in more than 50 countries, Givoly said, so it was important to build a simple feedback mechanism into the service. With just a click, he said, Medivizor users can tell the company whether its service was helpful. "We're trying to deliver only relevant information," Givoly said. "It's letting us know if we're doing the job right." The company also pays attention to what users are sharing via social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. "Their engagement is echoed all the time," Givoly said.

Remember what's important -- "First of all, be a person," Givoly said. At Medivizor, he said, the team respects it partners, clients, subscribers, and each other. One of the company's core values, Givoly added, is "life first." Medivizor's goal is to improve lives, according to thecompany's website, without "draining the life of all those involved in Medivizor."

Focus on the end result -- It's important to remember that starting a company is a marathon composed of many sprints, Givoly said. "We're trying to transform how people obtain health information," he said. "It's a long-term effort."

Announcement of Winners of Doctors 2.0 & You International Digital Health Start-up Contest

Doctors 2.0 & You Jun 11, 2014

Press Release

Doctors 2.0 & You Announced the Results of the 4th Edition International Digital Health Start-up Contest: 1st place for Medivizor (Israel) and 2nd place for Medexo (Germany)

Paris – June 9, 2014. Doctors 2.0 & You 4th Edition Start-up Contestant announced the winning and runner-up digital health start-up companies. First place was awarded to Medivizor (Israel) represented by Tal Givoly. Second place was awarded to Medexo (Germany) represented by Jan-Christoph Loh. The winners of the Start-up Contest were chosen for the quality of the solution they bring to a health problem and their likelihood to succeed. Tal Givoly, co-founder of Medivizor, winner of the start-up contest will have the opportunity to present his company on stage at the sister conference of Doctors 2.0 & You, Stanford Medicine X, founded by Dr Larry Chu, in September, 2014. Both companies, Medivizor and Medexo will also return to speak at the 5th edition of Doctors 2.0 & You, founded by Denise Silber.

Dr Larry Chu (Medicine X) observed that “This year’s start-up competition at Doctors 2.0 & You highlighted leading international innovators in digital health from five countries, a very talented group of start-ups. We are proud to welcome Medivizor to present on the Medicine X main stage at Stanford in the fall of this year.” Denise Silber (Doctors 2.0 & You) noted that ” Doctors 2.0 & You is happy to assemble such talented companies and to provide them with increased visibility and exposure to a very motivated and experienced jury”

“Medivizor’s mission is to improve the lives of people with serious medical conditions and those who care for them by providing all of the truly relevant and personalized information. The solution, now in public beta, combines patent-pending technology, medical expertise, and the wisdom of the crowd.” According to Tal Givoly, CEO of Medivizor, “Doctors 2.0 & You brought together a diverse group of pioneering healthcare professionals, patients, entrepreneurs, and policy makers, and everything in between. It was invigorating to have met so many amazing individuals – each with sincere eagerness to make the world better. It was particularly gratifying that the judges and the participants recognized Medivizor as the company most likely to succeed in the startup contest among the many companies and entrepreneurs that applied and the terrific short list of 7 companies that presented.”

“Medexo offers patients the possibility to obtain a medical second opinion from independent leading experts via the internet. Through this assessment, the patient gains additional information and security for his or her decision.” For Jan-Christoph Loh, CEO of Medexo, “ I am really happy to have achieved this result in the Doctors 2.0 & You start-up challenge and to get the opportunity to return to speak at Doctors 2.0 & You next year. On behalf of our whole team, I thank Denise and the Doctors2.0 & You team for two great days of interesting speeches and a lot of networking.It was an honour to be part of this great conference and I congratulate Tal of Medivizor for his awesome pitch performance and their motivating solution!The whole team of Medexo and I are looking forward to be a part of Doctors2.0 & You again next year.”

About Doctors 2.0 & YouThe Doctors 2.0 & You conference series, founded by Denise Silber is organized by Basil Strategies, digital health consultancy (Paris). It is the only international congress devoted to the understanding of how physicians use New Technologies, Web 2.0 tools and Social Media to communicate with colleagues, patients, payers, pharmaceutical companies and public agencies. The 4th edition took place in Paris on June 5-6, 2014. The conference website and blog includes videos, past presentations, interviews. Doctors 2.0 & You also organizes customized events and trainings. See http://www.doctors20.com.

Medivizor Announces Its Advisory Board

Medivizor Jun 30, 2014

The new Advisory Board’s diverse, highly skilled brain trust brings together expertise in medicine, science, health technology, patient advocacy, and business to help guide the strategic direction of Medivizor’s award-winning service.

New York, NY (PRWEB) June 30, 2014

Today, Medivizor, a pioneer in personalized health information and patient education, announces the formation of its Advisory Board. Internationally recognized experts on a wide range of medical domains and healthcare technologies will advise the company’s executive team. Since launching its public beta in August 2013, Medivizor (http://medivizor.com) has quickly become an invaluable resource for thousands of patients and caregivers, leading the charge to personalize health information for people coping with serious or chronic medical conditions.

“We are honored to have such a prestigious and diverse group of thought leaders, healthcare professionals, and scientific experts guiding our work,” said Tal Givoly, Medivizor’s CEO and Co-Founder. “This group collectively represents unparalleled scientific expertise with over 1,000 publications in scientific journals and published media in areas as diverse urology, cardiology, oncology, surgery, endocrinology, gastroenterology, patient advocacy and business. The Advisory Board’s experience and knowledge will be invaluable as we work toward improving the lives of people with serious or chronic medical conditions and of those who care for them.”

“Medivizor is the best way I know of to get personalized medical updates that are relevant, easy to understand and that focus precisely on the patient’s condition.” explains Alexis E. Te, MD, Chair of Medivizor’s Advisory Board, Professor of Urology at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University and Director of the Urology Program at the Iris Cantor Men's Health Center. Dr. Te leads research and academic and clinical education in areas including, benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), incontinence, prostatis, neurourology & urodynamics, female urology, onterstitial cystitis, laser surgery, and prostate cancer and other men's health issues.

Advisory Board member Esther Dyson, the visionary founder of HICCup (http://www.hiccup.co/), angel investor, director of several health-related nonprofit organizations says, “Medivizor helps make the great masses of complicated medical information both intelligible and specific to each individual. Whether you’re a doctor or a patient, there’s just too much information out there for any individual to handle -- Medivizor benefits both patients and doctors who have limited time and want the most targeted and up-to-date knowledge available on their specific illness.”

“The Internet is overflowing with health information. But only a small fraction of this information might be relevant to you. The brilliance of Medivizor is that it tells you what's important and why,” says David Edelman, Advisory Board member and Co-Founder and President of Diabetes Daily (http://www.diabetesdaily.com/), a leading diabetes online community.

Kathy Magliato, MD (http://kathymagliato.com/) a leading surgeon specializing in Heart/Lung Transplantation and Ventricular Assist Device implantation. Dr. Magliato is a nationally recognized authority on heart disease in women and has been featured extensively in the media.

Achiau Ludomirsky, MD, is a Professor of Pediatric Cardiology and the Director of Pediatric Cardiology at New York University’s School of Medicine. Dr. Ludomirsky’s specialties include fetal and pediatric heart imaging and noninvasive therapeutic procedures for fetuses and children with congenital heart disease.

Harry Fisch, MD (http://www.harryfisch.com/) is a Clinical Professor of Urology and Reproductive Medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University and a board certified urologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Fisch is prominently featured in media outlets focusing on men’s health issues including male infertility and reproduction and infertility.

Rache M. Simmons, MD is Chief of Breast Surgery and Professor of Surgical Oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Simmons is also Director of the Weill Cornell Breast Center and a nationally-renowned researcher and educator specializing in the field of minimally invasive breast cancer surgery. A frequent lecturer at national and international professional conferences, she has also authored over 100 scientific articles on the surgical treatment of breast cancer.

Giora Weisz, MD is Chairman of Cardiology at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem and Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Weisz specializes in innovative technologies in cardiovascular medicine including robotic-enhanced technologies and coronary interventions.

When people are confronted with a serious or chronic illness, they or their caregiver often become "chronic web researchers." This approach to finding relevant, trustworthy and understandable information is extremely ineffective and inefficient. Medivizor's award-winning service (http://bit.ly/medaward1) enables people to obtain the health information that is relevant to their conditions quickly and easily. Medivizor (http://medivizor.com) is a new free, private, personalized health information service that is endorsed by leading non-profit organizations and is being “prescribed” by doctors across the country.

Medivizor was conceived as a result of the personal experiences of its founders. Over the past decade, each has personally experienced the difficulty of using the Internet to understand and track pertinent medical knowledge and declared, “There must be a better way to get the information we need!”

The Boston Globe / Deborah Kotz Jul 02, 2014

Doctors often warn patients to avoid Internet searches of their medical conditions because there’s so much junk science that turn up on web searches. But there are certainly reliable websites out there that can provide valuable information like the American Cancer Society and National Cancer Institute, which provide up-to-date resources for patients on a variety of cancers.

The main drawback of such sites, however, is that you may need to spend hours wading through the ton of information they contain to find answers to specific questions. Enter a free website called Medivizor, which allows patients to input information about their cancer, heart disease, or diabetes diagnosis as well as their age, gender, body weight, and other health factors in order to get a personalized report online with recommended links for further reading.

“An algorithm uses the mini-medical profile and cuts through hundreds of clinical reports to select the most relevant ones to provide to the patient or caregiver,” said Tal Givoly, CEO and co-founder of Medivizor that launched last August. “The summary, written on a 10th grade level, provides key insights about the condition and treatments and fine print things like conflicting information in the science.”

Physicians, researchers, and other medical advisors previously culled through the research and wrote summaries for each condition that are updated every few months.

A similar website called UpToDate charges patients and caregivers about $45 for a 30-day subscription and is largely aimed at physicians with language filled with medical jargon that can be hard for a non-medical professional to decipher. It does, though, contain information on hundreds of conditions, whereas Medivizor only provides information on the five most common kinds of cancers — such as breast and prostate — and on diabetes, heart disease, and infertility.

After getting diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, Lee Kauffman, 57, said he found Medivizor useful to help him explore future treatment options. “My diabetes is really well controlled now with just the drug metformin,” said the Boston resident, “but I wanted to know if there were more effective drugs that also have a low risk of side effects just in case I need them later on.”

He’s planning on taking the information he found on the site to his endocrinologist.

Dr. Matthew Katz, medical director of radiation oncology at Lowell General Hospital Cancer Center, said he frequently recommends Medivizor to cancer patients who want more information on their diagnosis beyond the brochures provided by his office. “It provides reliable information for engaged patients who want to go deeper,” he said, and allows them to share information they find with him, like the full text of a journal article.

Katz, who isn’t involved with Medivizor, emphasized that the site isn’t for everyone, and doctors should carefully weigh how much information is too much for an individual patient before recommending it.

While Givoly said the site will expand over the next few years to include other conditions, the financial aspects — of how the company will make money on the free site that has no paid ads — haven’t yet been determined.

Special features: Current topics are breast cancer, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, and melanoma; diabetes of all types; cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension, coronary artery disease, and stroke; and infertility and reproductive technologies.

Cost: Currently free

Strengths: “Push” model brings information straight to the consumer; social media integration allows users to share research and treatments; personal dashboard is clean and user friendly, with filtering options; summarizes the evidence into short paragraphs at a more accessible reading level than academic, published research.

Weaknesses: Grade 10 reading level is still too difficult for the average consumer (research shows that the ideal reading level for consumer health information should be Grade 6) [1]; no clear explanation of article selection, review process, or authorship; no critical appraisal of the original research; not clear how the patient’s private information is translated into the articles they receive; abstract-like, textual format of summaries may not be comprehensible to some users.

Product Description

Medivizor is an information service that allows a patient or a patient caregiver to sign up for summaries of the latest research and evidence in a number of healthcare topics. It is currently accessible at no cost, although the Medivizor website states that their business model may evolve to include referral-based premium services or licensing to healthcare organizations [2]. Based on the patient’s condition(s), they are sent only the articles that are most relevant to their circumstances. To sign up, a user initially gives Medivizor their email address and then receives a link to answer more specific questions about their medical history. After providing their general demographic information such as date of birth, height, weight, ethnicity, and country of residence (Figure 1), they are then asked to provide diagnosis and treatment information on any conditions with which they have been diagnosed. Currently in a beta version, the site can only send information about certain types of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and infertility or reproductive technologies. However, the user is encouraged to enter any medical condition so that the Medivizor team is alerted for future topic development and expansion. The purpose of providing such detailed personal health information is to ensure the user is sent only the most pertinent information, thus fulfilling Medivizor’s objective of providing information that is “relevant, understandable, and actionable.”

After the user has provided their medical history (to the extent they feel comfortable), they are able to access their personalized dashboard where new summaries of the literature are posted and will receive email alerts when new information is available. This simple dashboard allows the user to read their results, save favourites, contribute to a discussion board for each article, share articles through social media or email, and provide feedback to the Medivizor team. They can also filter their results by the condition type and category of information, which is denoted with an icon. The categories include clinical trials, research, treatment, guidelines, “community” (websites, blogs, forum posts, news items), lifestyle, expertise (information about experts, doctors or institutions), and items original to Medivizor. (Figure 1.)

Features

Article summaries

Each article a user receives is a written summary of recent scholarly literature, formatted like a journal abstract; headings include “In a Nutshell”, “Some Background”, “Methods and Findings”, “The Bottom Line”, “The Fine Print”, and “What’s Next?” These articles are written at a grade 10 reading level; the title of the article is paraphrased for greater clarity, and medical jargon or technical terms are explained in parentheses. Important statements are bolded so that they stand out. The intention is to present an easy-to-understand summary of the latest evidence. As the site attests, many patients find having more information to be comforting in the face of a new diagnosis or chronic condition, and they want to be active partners in their care; however, the average lay person is unable to understand and find meaning in the scientific literature because it is written for practitioners and researchers, not consumers. Having access to a comprehensible summary of the latest scientific research allows them to take a more active role in their own healthcare. A link to the original article is provided, either to the free full text in PubMed Central or to the publisher’s site where it can be purchased.

Condition “refreshers”

Medivizor also provides fairly extensive “refreshers” on each of the user’s conditions, describing the condition, diagnosis, symptoms, tests and procedures, treatment, recovery, and other pertinent information. The written summary includes links to videos and images, some of which are credited to consumer health information providers such as the A.D.A.M. Illustrated Medical Encyclopedia [3]. However, neither authorship nor references are supplied. The refresher gives the patient a concise and informative overview, which not only brings a patient up to speed on the details of their condition but also lays a solid foundation for the subsequent articles that may be sent.

Group discussion and sharing

Part of Medivizor’s mission is to “effectively apply software and the social web to the field of health for the betterment of humanity” [4]. They partly accomplish this through group discussion and sharing features. Every article includes the ability to start or join a discussion with others who were sent the same article, meaning the user can discuss the article with people who face the same medical challenges. Users might ask a question regarding their treatment course or how to use the article information in their own care and receive support and feedback from other users and the Medivizor team.

Users also have the option of sharing articles online through Facebook, Twitter, or email. If they choose to share through social media, a link to the full text of the Medivizor article is created, and the user can add their own comments. Presumably, this open access sharing is meant to encourage others to sign up for the service. The email function will also send a copy of the article; Medivizor encourages the user to send articles directly to their care provider, thus enabling communication and engagement in their treatment plan.

Content and review process

From the information specialist’s perspective, one major failing of this product is that there is no transparency as to the content selection and review process. Many questions remain unanswered: Is selection based on a subject search algorithm through a database or through alerts from key journals? Which journals are included, and why? How are articles judged for quality, methodological soundness, currency, validity, or significance? Is there a particular critical appraisal process being followed? And most importantly, who reviews the literature, selects the studies, critically appraises the research, and writes the summaries? Are they medical experts or researchers themselves, or are they copy writers with no medical background? Is there a peer-review process before a summary is published? Though there is a Chief Medical Officer on the executive team, article authorship remains murky. This is worrisome, as the quality and validity of the articles depends on the author’s interpretation and understanding of the scientific literature. Interestingly, the Terms of Use specifically states “[w]e do NOT offer any medical advice or diagnoses and do NOT practice in medicine” [5], calling into question the reliability of their analysis of the evidence. It’s not necessary that article authors be medical professionals, but there should at the very least be some level of expert review. As with most online services, Medivizor does not take responsibility for any of the content they create or the use of such content.

Conclusion

Medivizor is a unique product in a crowded consumer health landscape. It aims to improve people’s healthcare experiences by giving them a critical tool—a better understanding of recently published scientific literature. Often, patients and their caregivers must manage with either patient education handouts that are frequently light on details or complex scientific research that they may struggle to understand. Medivizor’s article summaries translate research into digestible information that the user can then discuss with their healthcare provider, giving them a measure of control over, and participation in, their treatment. The product dashboard and articles are easy to navigate and cleanly presented, although perhaps in need of more visual cues and colour for those who are not textual learners. The content of the articles remains troublesome, however, with no clear explanation of the method through which articles are created. Patients should be advised to use Medivizor with caution, in combination with other reliable sources such as MedlinePlus to inform their care, at least until the article review process is made more transparent by the Medivizor team.

Medivizor & healtheo360 announce a strategic partnership

Medivizor & healtheo360 Sep 18, 2014

Medivizor and healtheo360 form a strategic partnership to deliver personalized and relevant medical information to members' inboxes.

The information delivered through Medivizor gives the members of healtheo360 additional resources to discuss with their doctors, and with fellow patients and caregivers in their online support groups.

healtheo360, an online Caring Network of patients seeking support and information about living with chronic health conditions is proud to announce its partnership with Medivizor. Medivizor is the first and only service that personalizes what matters most – health information. After an initial registration, Medivizor delivers straight to the inbox only the health information one can trust and personally matches to them, saving endless time and frustration of scouring the web for this information themselves.

Medivizor finds medical research papers that are relevant to an individual’s condition and condenses it down from very technical information to an easy to understand summary so the patient can then have a more informed discussion about their treatment path with their doctor. With this partnership, healtheo360 members will have direct access to Medivizor resources after completing a brief health survey about their condition. Membership in both programs is free.

“Many of our healtheo360 members turn to the Internet for information about the chronic conditions they are either living with or caring for someone with a condition. The Internet is highly cluttered with irrelevant, repetitive, and difficult to understand material,” says David S. Duplay, Founder and CEO of healtheo360. “With Medivizor, they can finally do away with the confusion and access the information they need as it is delivered straight to them.”

Through healtheo360, patients and caregivers, family members, and friends can share their stories about dealing with chronic conditions such as diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and dozens of others. Members can post journal entries, upload video testimonials, and participate in online support groups to help spread awareness.

Tal Givoly, CEO of Medivizor, finds the two programs to be highly complementary. “The information delivered through Medivizor gives the members of healtheo360 additional resources to discuss with their doctors, and with fellow patients and caregivers in their online support groups. It is our hope that this information will help improve the lives of people with serious or chronic medical conditions and of those who care for them.”

In addition to providing succinct summaries of medical research papers, Medivizor also offers guidelines, information on clinical trials, healthy lifestyle tools, and information on treatment options.

About healtheo360:

healtheo360 gives patients, caregivers, family and friends the ability to share their stories via video or text. Members follow each other on their journeys, communicate with each other throughout the site, and participate in various Support Groups.

healtheo360 is an important social resource for patients and caregivers to understand and manage their conditions as well as receive relevant medical content from 3rd party authoritative sources through our support group network.

healtheo360 offers people with chronic conditions a trusted venue to share their stories with the hope that it will help just one person understand how to cope with and manage their condition. Likewise, people who are diagnosed with a chronic condition want to hear from others just like them to better understand what their future might look like, how to deal with the many challenges they might be faced with and to feel less alone. To learn more about healtheo360 and their services, visit healtheo360.com.

About Medivizor:

Medivizor personalizes what matters most – health information. Medivizor is an award-winning, patent-pending, online service bringing all the personally relevant medical information straight to the inboxes of patients, caregivers, and their medical teams. After answering a brief health survey, Medivizor users then receive emails with medical information tailored specifically for that individual. Medivizor is not a replacement for your doctors or medical team, but is a tool to be utilized in conjunction with your team. With Medivizor, those facing serious or chronic medical conditions can improve their quality of life

Six Companies That Are Reimagining Existing Tech Trends

Forbes | Ilya Pozin Oct 14, 2014

As a close observer of entrepreneurship and the tech industry overall, I am well aware that this business is not immune to fads and trends just like other markets. Whether it’s the multitude of social networks that led to the dominance of Facebook, or the tsunami of simple games that were released following the explosion of Candy Crush, the tech industry is not immune to borrowing good ideas.

In fact, if the vast war of legal battles between tech giants like Apple, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft is any indication, tech companies small and large are clearly influenced by each other and are constantly on the look out for inspiration in their competitors.

Sometimes that can seem like copying, but other times it leads to genuine innovation as entrepreneurs take existing concepts and either remix them to create something new, or go against the trend in such a way to create a whole new experience.

I love these companies that stand out for either reimagining a trend or discarding it entirely. So here is a list of six companies that are taking tech trends along a different path.

<Coverage of 5 other companies / trends>

Medivizor – Forget Tracking, When It Comes To Health Information Is Key

Fitbit. Fuelband. Apple Health Kit. Theses are just the latest names in the long list of devices and services intended to help users track their health and fitness and collect data that may one day help doctors make decisions about our health. But today, they provide only low resolution info that is more of thumbnail than a complete picture. However, there is still a serious need for patients to access in-depth information about the conditions that doctors have already diagnosed.

That’s where Medivizor, an online health service, is stepping in. Medivizor helps users understand and access medical information about serious or chronic diseases while providing the necessary context about where it came from. The unique platform combines patent-pending personalization technology with easy-to-understand synopses of complex medical material, and mixes in the wisdom of the crowd. It helps users find all the most important information that is specifically relevant and personalized for their medical situation.

It always seems like the safe bet to follow the trends as most people assume that will lead them to success. However, if these companies are any example, it might be that trends are just another sign on the path to real innovation, the only question is which direction to take. What about you, do you know companies that are spinning tech trends in new directions? Let me know in the comments.

Tired of Doctor Google, Try Medivizor

My Urology Doctor | Dr. David W. Hall, M.D. Oct 29, 2014

We’ve all used Google to self diagnose our various medical conditions, right? Were they enjoyable or efficient experiences? I doubt it! While I’m very good at sifting through “doctor Google” for urology conditions, I’m very bad at rummaging through non-urology conditions and information outside of my specialty training. After being a patient several times during the last few years, I noticed I used Google even more poorly in that role.

As a blogger and speaker, I’m constantly networking and researching to find the latest and greatest resources for my family, friends, and patients. Not long ago, I came across a new start-up named Medivizor. Their mission is to “improve the lives of people with serious and chronic medical conditions and those who care for them”, and to “effectively apply software and the social web to the field of health for the betterment of humanity”. After doing a little further research on their team, values and product, I decided it was time to speak with them firsthand and explore the Medivizor process.

If you’re tired of sifting through pages and pages of questionable Google content, give Medivizor a try! They’re using software and the social web to help make the information gathering experience more personal, productive, and efficient. For an example, click the link to check out a research article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Was it easy or enjoyable to read? Probably not! Now for a comparison, click this link to see firsthand how Medivizor processed the article and summarized the findings and implications in an easy to read format (all Medivizor articles are written in a 10th grade English reading level). A lot better, right?

I’m currently conducting a one month Medivizor trial. I’m also helping connect my prostate cancer patients (Prostate cancer is the only urologic condition Medivizor is servicing at the moment. I’m confident they will add many more in the future) with this service if they desire. If you’re interested in giving the service a trial as well, it’s free of charge, entirely elective, and you only need an email to get started. Watch the quick tutorial video to your right for more information, then go toMedivizor.com, and submit your email to sign up. It’s that easy!

Be sure to stay tuned. I am going to write a follow-up blog once my Medivizor trial is complete. I’m going to summarize my experience to better characterize Medivizor’s utility. Please sign up to follow my blog so you don’t miss out. I also encourage you to “like” us on Facebook and “follow” us on Twitter.

–Dr. David W. Hall, M.D. is founder of My Urology Doc (aka MUD) and is the primary content crafter for all of it’s social media outlets. Utilizing MUD, he is currently helping 5 K followers in over 75 countries make the choice to get involved in their urologic healthcare. He is working on various healthcare applications, collaborating with health innovators, and actively speaking to various groups on diverse topics. He is also continuing to provide the best urology care possible in the communities of Fishers, Indiana and New Castle, Indiana. Follow him on twitter at @myurologydoc.

Enspektos Nov 30, 2014

4 Tel Aviv Challenge Cup Winners Emerge in ‘Startup City’

1776 | The Challenge Cup Dec 04, 2014

The 1776 Challenge Cup headed to Tel Aviv this evening to hear solutions from dozens of Israeli startups. Tel Aviv is a return stop from last year’s Challenge Cup. But the venue and 1776 partner this year was a new one, The Library, a coworking and networking space for entrepreneurs within a functioning library.

The event featured a packed audience of investors, entrepreneurs and tech community members. Altogether, about 40 startups presented their ideas in the categories of education, energy, health and mobility & cities. Mobility & cities emerged as the most crowded category, with 14 companies represented.

The pitching was the culmination of a day of networking and mentor sessions at The Library. The competition itself broke down into two rounds. During the first-round pitches, founders had one minute apiece to explain their solutions. During round two the finalists had a maximum of five minutes each to delve further into their ventures and then three minutes in which to answer questions from the judges. The health and education categories featured the most startups vying to win.

The four winning startups are:

Total Boox - A platform for ebook distribution, Total Boox only charges users for what they read. They download books for free and then pay as they go.

Aquanos - Aquanos has developed a unique wastewater treatment technology and system, which uses a fraction of the energy required by conventional wastewater treatment plants. The system uses microalgae to produce the oxygen required for aerobic wastewater treatment, which then takes place on a fixed-film system.

Medivizor - Medivizor interprets the infinitum of data out there and tailors it for users by examining their medical history and creating a personalized profile with all relevant information and updates. Unlike other medical information websites. The platform is highly customized for each person.

Insights - Insights helps cities make smarter decisions by leveraging the insights of their stakeholders. Its consulting platform turns the wisdom of stakeholders into advice that decision-makers can use. Crowd-consulting enables cities to improve their outcomes and create partners for change.

Tel Aviv marks the sixth stop of the Challenge Cup and the third city outside of the United States. Over the next six months, 1776 will travel to 16 different global cities in 11 countries in search of the most promising companies. In May the winning Tel Aviv startups will join the winners from all of the other competitions for the Challenge Festival in D.C.

1776 | Melissa Steffan Dec 12, 2014

Most health information available on the Internet suffers from one major flaw: It’s likely to be irrelevant. That’s right: The Mayo Clinic and WebMD illness pages you find through a Google search after being diagnosed with a condition are mostly generic and often useless for your particular situation.

Tal Givoly, cofounder of Medivizor, envisions a different experience. According to Givoly, Medivizor is a web-based platform that can deliver personalized information about patient’s condition, translating it from medical jargon into plain, readable English.

Givoly’s pitch won the health category for Challenge Cup Tel Aviv last week, earning him a spot in Challenge Festival in May 2015 in Washington, D.C.

But Givoly didn’t wait until May to head to D.C. Following the competition, Givoly headed out to Maryland to speak at the mHealth Summit this week. During his stay, he stopped by 1776 to chat about his company and how he intends to revolutionize health information—and save lives while doing it.

What is Medivizor?

When people become sick with a serious or chronic illness, they or somebody who cares for them become what I call a “chronic web researcher.” This is an undiagnosed, untreated condition—unnamed actually, until we named it. It’s no longer just health anxiety or casual symptom checking. It’s doing everything and anything to help themselves or loved ones.

That whole process is really broken. First, they’re overwhelmed with way too much information and most of it is repetitive. Most of it doesn’t relate to their situation, and some of it is out of date and not relevant. They actually could get to very scary stuff that would be very dangerous for them. And even if they do dive in and get to the core research, they can’t understand it because it’s too complicated.

We thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if people would come in and get cutting-edge science—only what’s relevant for their situation—in language they could understand, and sent to their inbox?” They, their caregivers and their doctors, could become world experts on their particular condition. That’s what we do.

How is it different from Google or WebMD?

Google represents the failure. You can learn about breast cancer—but you’ll see the same thing 10 times. If you put the words “alternative” or “natural” in, God forbid, then you’re going to be killed by what you find. It’s not because there’s no information, but because it’s scary to go down that line. It’s generic information that’s not cutting edge and not related to you.

Your mission is to improve lives of those with chronic illness and those who care for them. Incredibly aspirational—how do you operationalize that?

We scan and cull all new information that gets published, and we classify all that information by relevance—can it be used to treat patients now or in the near future? To whom does it apply? How reliable is the information? We translate that into 10th grade English and deliver it to the patients for whom it is relevant.

The trick is that we have to know enough about the individual. If you give us a profile—fill in enough details—then we get to know you. We know what treatments you’ve received, what other conditions you have, your age, gender, height, weight, and then we could find just the information that’s relevant to you.

We begin after a diagnosis. We’re not yet dealing with issues of symptom checking and self-diagnosis. Once you have a diagnosis, we’re here to replace the intense research that’s going on.

How did you get the idea?

Each of the cofounders saw it from a different perspective. I saw friends of mine whose daughter had leukemia and what they were coping with still caused a lot of research. My business partner and friend was the caregiver for his mother, and though he was well-connected and educated, he had to basically hire people to help do (the research).

Then, professor Steve Kaplan saw this from the medical side, when patients would come in with all of these Google printouts that are nonsense and he has to de-bunk what they’ve been told online. Headlines tend to sensationalize—and we do the opposite. We caveat it, weigh it against other information. Think about Medivizor as having a super-motivated, expert doctor working for you, who’s also a member of your family and bringing you the cutting edge.

Where do you get the data that comprises the individualized Medivizor reports?

It’s coming from published journals. Everything published is on PubMed. There’s a repository—it’s just not in plain English. There’s also ClinicalTrials.gov, for instance, and other public repositories that publish this information. It’s not codified so people could figure out for whom it is relevant.

How do you make money?

Since we have this rich user profile, with the permission of the user, we could make money by referring them to the right clinical trials or treatments, or value-added service providers. The other thing is licensing to medical institutions so that the doctors can have it and so that their patients could have it. Finally, there are premium services to some consumers—if people want more capabilities while keeping Medivizor a free resource available to all patients.

What are some of your successes so far?

We are so excited that a top 10 medical institution is now “Powered by Medivizor.” Their health information, research and clinical trials and patient education portals are powered by Medivizor. We have more nonprofits that have endorsed us, and this year we’ve won three startup contests—Doctors 2.0 & You in Paris in June; Interface Digital Health Summit 2014 in Vancouver in September; and of course the Challenge Cup in Tel Aviv.

What in your background—and your cofounders’—paved the way for Medivizor?

Steve Kaplan is a world-famous urologist and has co-authored 850 published works. I don’t know how you even do that. He’s on a dozen editorial boards, and he’s a world expert in BPH. He’s also an entrepreneur. The last company he founded, Mediata Solutions, is one of only two successful digital health IPOs in the last 10 years; it traded at about $2.5 billion on NASDAQ. My other business partner, Dr. Oren Fuerst, I’ve known since elementary school, founded a number of companies.

And I’m a software developer, but I was in startups for seven years, then seven years in large companies, back and forth, twice. Last time I did something in digital health, it was for Israel’s largest HMO.

Most of all, though, we figured out that technology has barely been applied to health. It’s just the tip of the iceberg. The flurry of innovation we’re seeing now is barely scratching the surface. Digital health requires both perseverance and extreme entrepreneurship to bring and extract value. We have many years ahead of us, helping people’s lives.

What will you be working on with Medivizor between now and Challenge Festival?

Ramping up subscribers—we’d like to help as many people as we can! We’re also looking to bring on more large medical systems—providers, payers, the whole ecosystem.

mHealth Israel Dec 16, 2014

TEL AVIV, Israel, December 16, 2014 /PRNewswire/

Personalized Health Information App Beats 50 Startups

mHealth Israel Conference today announced the winner of its mobile health startup contest, Medivizor. The startup -- which helps people coping with serious or chronic illness get cutting-edge, reliable, health information that matters most -- presented in front of a packed conference hall at Tel Aviv University, beating seven finalists, and winning eligibility for a round of OurCrowd funding.

"We are honored to win this tough competition, especially given the outstanding startup innovation landscape in which we competed," said Tal Givoly, Medivizor's Co-Founder and CEO. "This is a major milestone for us, as the conference's platform enables us to share ideas with other healthcare entrepreneurs, potential investors, and industry giants too."

mPharma, a startup that provides real-time data on physician's prescriptions and patient drug consumption for governments and pharmaceutical companies in Africa, came in second.

"mHealth Israel provides the digital health ecosystem a unique platform to exchange ideas and opportunities in a diverse forum not found anywhere else in Israel," said Levi Shapiro, the lead organizer for mHealth Israel. "A growing number of Israeli entrepreneurs are creating world class digital health startups, and global mHealth leaders are taking note."

Other finalists include:

Breezometer: BreezoMeter maps air pollution in real time and provides street resolution air pollution data to customers through API's and big data reporting.

TalkItt: Talkitt is a voice recognition software that gives millions of people with speech disabilities the ability to "talk" in their own voice.

Lifegraph: LifeGraph is a platform that allows psychiatrists to better monitor their patients and detect deterioration in their mental state.

Intendu: Intendu develops personalized and adaptive brain rehabilitation software for easy and effective usage at the home and at the clinic.

The second annual conference, which took place at Tel Aviv University yesterday, included insights into the Israeli and global digital health sectors from various leaders in the field. 300 participants from over 50 companies were present at the conference, including more than 30 speakers from the likes of Sony, Orange Group, Cleveland Clinic, and Microsoft.

About mHealth Israel:
mHealth Israel is a community for Israeli digital health and IT entrepreneurs. In addition to the annual conference, mHealth Israel hosts monthly events to support Israeli digital health startups. Speakers at monthly events and the annual conference are from outside ofIsrael, reflecting the global nature of the industry. The event is held in collaboration with Tel Aviv University and the Center of Excellence in Wireless IT (CEWIT), State University of New York. For more information: http://www.mhealthisrael.com

Medivizor Wins mHealth Competition with Personalized Health App

mHealthWatch Dec 29, 2014

The winner of the mobile health startup contest was Medivizor, a company that helps people coping with serious or chronic illness get cutting-edge, reliable, health information.

“We are honored to win this tough competition, especially given the outstanding startup innovation landscape in which we competed,” says Tal Givoly, Medivizor’s co-founder and CEO. “This is a major milestone for us, as the conference’s platform enables us to share ideas with other healthcare entrepreneurs, potential investors, and industry giants too.”

Another startup, mPharma, which provides real-time data on physician’s prescriptions and patient drug consumption for governments and pharmaceutical companies in Africa, took second place.

The conference is designed to showcase and support the best new technologies and applications created by innovative startups.

“mHealth Israel provides the digital health ecosystem a unique platform to exchange ideas and opportunities in a diverse forum not found anywhere else in Israel,” said Levi Shapiro, the lead organizer for mHealth Israel. “A growing number of Israeli entrepreneurs are creating world class digital health startups, and global mHealth leaders are taking note.”

The Google of Medicine

Jerusalem Post Jan 01, 2015

Medicine and technology have been advancing in tandem during recent decades.

You’re searching for information on diseases and find yourself drowning in the endless results you get? The start-up Medivizor developed a website that offers a targeted search after answering a few questions.

One of the worst days in life is the one in which we receive the bad news: Someone close to us is seriously sick, or even, G-d forbid, we ourselves are.

Whether it is cancer, diabetes or any other disease, a moment after hearing about the bad news, we begin to digest it. We want to know what this sickness is, what it means, what we are about to go through, what action to take, how to treat it, and how our daily lives will change.

Three entrepreneurs have joined forces to deal with this issue: Dr. Oren Fuerst, a veteran entrepreneur and serial investor in companies; Tal Givoly, a senior leader in technology companies, the most recent of which is Amdocs, where he served as chief scientist; and Prof. Steven Kaplan, an international expert in the field of urology, who published many articles on the subject. They established Medivizor, which offers an easy and accessible way for finding medical information.

The website resolves several issues: When you search with Google or any other search engine for a specific medical problem, you get countless results and a huge amount of information that it is almost impossible to deal with. In addition, one can’t always tell whether the information is authoritative or not. The website also makes it easier for doctors by helping them deal with patients and their families but cutting out a number of irrelevant questions.

Medivizor offers a solution in which potential users are asked to answer about 15 questions regarding their specific condition.

These are the key questions an expert doctor needs to know to determine the treatment path. After answering these questions, each patient receives an individualized detailed summary of his or her medical condition and information about relevant research and clinical studies.

In the future, the website may help patients and their loved ones find medical centers that specialize in their illness.

Although Medivizor contains information on many medical conditions, particularly on the most common ones, the website still does not cover all of them. In collaboration with physicians, the company is working to expand its database and the scope of the medical conditions its website covers.

Matching researchers
The company wants to help match researchers who wish to carry out clinical trials with patients who are interested in participating in such trials. It is committed to maintaining the privacy of patients and the confidentiality of the information they provide. This information is not shared without the patients’ consent. Medivizor plans to offer its services to doctors and professionals so that they can be updated conveniently and quickly about cutting-edge relevant information.

According to Medivizor, the website currently includes information about 75 percent of cardiovascular and heart disease, 90% of cancer incidents and all the different types of diabetes. The system relies on the wisdom of crowds, and as the number of users grows, the service for all subscribers will improve and become more effective.

Currently, the service on the website is in English, but it will be offered in other languages in the future. Medivizor has a team of five members and about 25 experts around the world. It has raised $1.2 million from angel investors.

My personal opinion
Medicine and technology have been advancing in tandem during recent decades.

Over time, medical professionals are using technological developments that improve medical care for a growing number of people in the world.

Sharing information is a significant factor in the ability of medicine to prevent disease and provide relevant information to patients.

The ability to reduce the information gaps that exist between different locations worldwide and to reach patients in remote locations is a challenge that until recently was very difficult to overcome. The Internet has exposed many people to a vast amount of information, including medical information that can help them.

But there’s a catch: Overload of information may not necessarily provide a better solution.

Patients and doctors can get lost in the sea of information.

The overflow of information, much of it unreliable or unprofessional, leads doctors to ignore it altogether. The tendency of some doctors to advise their patients to ignore what they learn online and listen only to them, as reflected in a recent television advertisement, is unjustified.

Patients and family members are entitled to learn about the significance of their illness, its various treatment options and how to be better prepared to deal with the challenges they face, not only through their doctors. Medivizor allows them to do so.

www.wabei.cn Feb 06, 2015

Here in Israel in 2015 to present you 10 of the most noteworthy Internet healthcare companies.Innovation and entrepreneurship practices from the kingdom, will bring inspiration how Chinese companies?

1 Treato-- medical field Google

How to spot trends in the mass of information on the Internet, find the key? Medical big data companies Treato automatically collect, index, and analyze the major website published by the patient and physician information, extract the key information and analysis of the whole story, and by the data mining presents the big picture: them about the disease, the treatment actually said what ? What is their treatment experiences and circumstances? Treato is currently the world's largest repository of such information, except in patients with users, the world's top 50 pharmaceutical companies in nine also using Treato system.

2 MobileOCT-- cancer detection using a mobile phone

Whether the cancer is detected using a mobile phone sound like a fairy tale? Israeli companies MobileOCT has done. MobileOCT first product by phone, camera and algorithms combine speculum just install on the phone can be effective in helping detect early cervical cancer, has been used in Kenya, Haiti, Mexico and the United States. MobileOCT present and many of the world's leading health care institutions started cooperation.

3 Tyto Care-- come out of anywhere examination

Wanted at home easily achieve physical? Israeli start-up companies can do Tyto Care. Using the company's handheld devices, the average user at any time and place to achieve accurate examination, (of course Tyto also supports remote physician examination). Tyto Care can now detect the organs and parts, including the mouth, throat, glasses, heart, lungs and skin.

4 Talkitt-- enable patients to re-express themselves

Each year, language difficulties caused by illness affecting millions of people to express themselves.This start-ups, Talkitt, identified by the difficult pronunciation into a recognizable language, to help them express themselves again. Talkitt The App can recognize the user's speech patterns as the basis for the ambiguous pronunciation into clear language, the language difficulties crowd due to stroke, brain injury, autism, Parkinson's disease as a result of a wide range of use. Talkitt support any language, and has won multiple awards for innovation.

5 Haldor-- leading surgical tool tracking management system

How to improve surgical safety, avoid malpractice occurred? Haldor company through ORLocate surgical tool tracking management system to help achieve health system cost control and lean management. ORLocate is the world's first use of RFID technology throughout the preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative surgical tool tracking management system, also can be customized according to the needs of medical institutions to reduce costs, improve patient safety and lean management has a wide range of uses.

Faced with medical information on the Internet, such as sea-ho, patients often feel at a loss, the authenticity of the enemy. Medivizor is the first to provide a truly personalized information and services for patients with chronic and severe disease site, won first place in Israel sponsored by well-known venture OurCrowd Internet medical entrepreneurship contest. Through a unique algorithm, Medivizor help each patient access to accurate, timely, reliable, and most health and disease-related information.

The study found that only half of the patients will follow doctor's orders to take drugs, according to the prescription medication is crucial for the patient's recovery. Is there an effective way to allow patients to take medication? MediSafe moving through pioneering medical management software, along with their friends and relatives and hospitals to help patients become more healthy. MediSafe by observing the behavior of the patient, to understand the patient's time and the amount of medication barriers and medication plan tailored to the patient. Even more unusual is, MediSafe solutions are also applicable to non-smart phones.

8 Heramed-- innovative pregnancy monitoring platform

Internet for pregnancy medical product after another, but it is Israel Heramed startups such an outstanding representative. Heramed make pregnancy monitoring has become extremely simple, and its products Compass is the first medical-grade home fetal health monitoring products, so that mothers can safely via smartphones, accurately monitor the health of the fetus. Compass integrates multiple sensors, real-time monitoring of fetal heart rate, and electronic medical records can be combined to achieve the integration of Internet medical management.

9 uMoove-- camera to "see" your brain

Every day staring at the phone to see you have not thought about your cell phone while you are looking at? Glasses are the windows of the soul. uMoove developed eye and face tracking technology will allow mobile device to record your tracks eye movements that can help catch early signs of a stroke, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Parkinson's disease, glaucoma and other diseases. uMoove algorithms rely camera, but the camera accuracy requirements are very low, which is widely used for its'd opened a vast world.

10 HelpAround-- diabetes mutual social platforms

Diabetes is a need to always pay attention to the disease, but even so, sometimes there will be unexpected to happen. HelpAround want to make as many people involved in the process of treatment of diabetes, which allows diabetics to share with each other, to find the desired blood glucose meter or insulin in its vicinity. When people with diabetes suddenly into a diabetic coma and other emergency situations, simply press the emergency button to notify nearby nurse or diabetes understand ordinary people. Recently, HelpAround also started to provide services for the food allergic people.

Goodbye Dr. Google, hello Medivizor

Israel21c Feb 18, 2015

Doctors often warn patients and their families against searching the Internet for medical information. But that’s exactly what Israeli inventor Tal Givoly and med-tech serial entrepreneur Dr. Oren Fuerst did when serious illnesses hit their families.

While they knew the consequences of all the junk science and misleading information on the web, Givoly needed to know how to save the life of his teenage daughter who was suffering congestive heart failure, and Fuerst needed decisive information as the caregiver for his cancer-stricken mother.

Together with world-renowned urologist Steven Kaplan, who had too many patients bringing him printouts of disinformation they found online, Givoly and Fuerst created Medivizor – a company that uses patent-pending technology to sift through thousands of content articles and find the most essential information applicable and personalized for each person’s medical situation.

The company says its software, crowdsourcing techniques and medical expertise can help information-seekers access easy-to-read, relevant and customized information in one place.

“Medivizor personalizes health information. Sounds like that’s been done before but to the best of our knowledge it hasn’t,” CEO Givoly tells ISRAEL21c. “We bring the cutting edge of science to people it matters most to, in a way they can understand and act upon.”

“Dr. Google” is known to make web-surfers believe they have severe ailments or side effects they often do not have. WebMD, on the other hand, offers textbook information that is not personalized.

“There’s a lot of great health information out there, but it’s generic,” Givoly says. “The textbook was written many years ago with the knowledge of many years ago, and is the same for everybody. So if somebody has a specific situation, the textbook is not what they care about. What they care about is what the best science is right now.”

Revolutionary online health service

Israel is a leader in mobile health (mHealth) technologies thanks to a government decision in 1980 mandating digital health records for each citizen. There are dozens of mHealth startups in Israel as a result.

Medivizor was among eight finalists (out of more than 50 Israeli startups) to present their game-changing technologies at the mHealth Israel conference in December.

“We are honored to win this tough competition, especially given the outstanding startup innovation landscape in which we competed,” said Givoly after winning first place. “This is a major milestone for us, as the conference’s platform enables us to share ideas with other healthcare entrepreneurs, potential investors and industry giants, too.”

It was one of four contests Medivizor won in a span of six months in 2014. The revolutionary online health service also took first-place finishes in the 1776 DC Challenge Cup, Most INVESTABLE Startup — INTERFACE Digital Health Summit 2014, and Doctors 2.0 & You 2014.

Perhaps the biggest feather in the company’s cap is that doctors, clinics and medical institutions are promoting the site to their patients. While health professionals dissuade their patients from checking in with Dr. Google or WebMD, now they’re actually encouraging them to receive cutting-edge personalized health information from Medivizor.

“There’s an enormous amount of new science published each year. There were 9,362 research papers published on prostate cancer alone last year, 19,500 on breast cancer, and 35,000 on diabetes. No doctor or researcher can read all that material. Add to that hundreds or thousands of clinical trials that offer different ways to treat the same illnesses,” says Givoly.

“We scan all the information, determine its clinical relevance, then we translate it to something like Cliff Notes and share it with patients, caregivers and medical teams.”

Helping the greater good

Medivizor is free to the user and makes money from health institutions. But Givoly says users need not worry about their privacy, noting the company does not give away any information without permission.

Users create an account, type in the kind of information related to the person they are seeking information for, and then get selected, relevant material sent to their inbox. The site is not meant to replace a doctor but rather to make the user more knowledgeable.

The site also offers details about clinical trials currently enrolling patients.

On November 13, 2012, Givoly – a serial inventor who holds over 25 granted patents — wrote a blog post announcing the launch of Medivizor.

“Whatever I do, it should inspire me and I must be passionate about it,” he wrote. He also wanted to do something that “had the potential to bring great benefit to the world.”

Givoly tells ISRAEL21c: “We want to help millions of people coping with serious or chronic illness. We think that it’s really a shame that besides coping with their illness, they need to also cope with chronic web researching without being able to access the cutting-edge of science in medicine.”

Sick? Medivizor Thinks for You

Weet Magazine Feb 23, 2015

(translated with Google Translate and minor edits)

Seriously Ill. You will only get the message. From that moment your life takes a different turn. Everything now runs only to that one. The treatment is started. You worry. Will it go well? Do the doctors there know everything? Do they know of the latest study results? The new free tool - Medivizor -can be your help at hand.

Many people with a (fatal) disease spend endless time on the Internet, looking for research that can provide something for their healing process. The beauty of the Internet is that you can find all kinds of things, but in this case it is also a disadvantage. You can "drown" in the data. What is reliable and what is not? And what is trustworthy in these research results?

Medivizor is a new online tool that allows searching for research that can be simplified considerably. You can register for this free. You are asked to fill in your specific disease characteristics. From then, sends Medivizor you regularly up-to-date and clearly readable information, focusing on the disease you have. It does not replace the visit to the doctor, of course, but it can be nice to have in there.

#BCSM Spotlight – Dr. Diane Radford

Breast Cancer Social Media Mar 25, 2015

Why does connecting on social media matter to you?
Because social media is growing as a communication tool, I believe to be up-to-date we must engage in social media. I have really appreciated being involved in the #bcsm chats, both learning from others and answering questions. Reading tweets from conferences is a great way to stay current with the latest data. I’ve learned from physicians such as Pauline Chen and Kevin Pho. To quote Dr. Pho from a New York Times article “The biggest risk of social media in health care is not using it at all.”

Can you really counsel patients online?
One has to be careful not to overstep the boundaries and treat online. I can direct to resources and articles. Many of the august bodies such as the AMA have social media guidelines, it’s important not to stray from them.

What is your responsibility beyond the patients you see in your office?
To teach and to learn. My responsibility is to disseminate reliable, trustworthy information. Twitter is the ideal medium to do that. When I come across an interesting article on ASCO News for example, I want to share that. It’s curation, a way of using my platform for good.

Where can patients find reliable information in your speciality?Medivizor is a great resource. I recommend it. Patients receive articles pertinent to them rather than searching through material that does not apply to their situation. The National Cancer Institute website is another valuable online resource.

How important are second opinions?
If a patient wants a second opinion, they should feel free to get one. Sometimes hearing the same recommendation from a different source can be very reassuring for the patient and their family. I give recommendations of whom they should see if a patient expresses that wish.

Dr. Diane Radford is a breast surgical oncologist practicing in St. Louis. More information including her Health & Wellness and Creative blogs can be found atDianeRadfordMD.com. She can also be found on Twitter: @dianeradfordmd

10 Online Health Resources to Recommend to Patients

Physicians Practice Mar 26, 2015

(you can view full list by signing up at Physician Practice (free) and then click link "Go to the source", below)

Together with 9 other resources, Medivizor is described as follows:

A new source on the block, Medivizor is connecting the Web 2.0 dots for patients, caregivers, and physicians, offering personalized, free services primarily aimed at those with serious or chronic medical conditions. The startup is one of those innovative, eclectic blends of medicine and technology, and has thus far found partners in a number of solid institutions, including Weill Cornell Medical College and New York-Presbyterian

Hospital.

The service is in public beta (which means it's testing out or piloting services) with a mission of providing physician-backed guidance to the best information available on the Internet about specific diseases, the latest relevant research, and even clinical trials. Patients sign up to receive tailored information that is digestible by the public; for example, a patient may receive an e-mail about groundbreaking research summarized at a 10thgrade

Medivizor Gives New Meaning to Personalised Healthcare

eHealth News May 04, 2015

Medivizor is out to help improve the lives of chronic patients by keeping them up to date with the latest personalised medical news and information.

Israeli-American eHealth start-up, Medivizor, is out to help improve the lives of chronic patients by keeping them up to date with the latest personalised medical news and information.

Inventor and CEO of Medivizor, Tal Givoly, and med-tech serial entrepreneur, Dr Oren Fuerst, developed the Medivizor software with support from world-renowned urologist, Steven Kaplan, after they battled to find relevant and reliable medical information to help them better understand chronic conditions affecting their family members.

By creating a free account with Medivizor, patients can enter the type of information they are seeking and will then receive relevant material in their inbox. “Medivizor personalises health information. Sounds like that’s been done before but to the best of our knowledge it hasn’t,” said Givoly during an interview with ISRAEL21c. “We bring the cutting edge of science to people it matters most to, in a way they can understand and act upon.”

Medivizor is able to scan through thousands of medical papers to determine its clinical relevance to the patient. “There’s an enormous amount of new science published each year. Last year there was 9,362 research papers published on prostate cancer, 19,500 on breast cancer and 35,000 on diabetes. No doctor or researcher can read all that material,” said Givoly.

“Add to that hundreds or thousands of clinical trials that offer different ways to treat the same illnesses. We scan all the information, determine its clinical relevance, and then we translate it to something like Cliff Notes and share it with patients, caregivers and medical teams,” continued Givoly.

The site also offers details about clinical trials currently enrolling patients. “Right now there are over 1,400 interventional breast cancer clinical trials,” said Givoly. “These are options your doctor probably doesn’t know about, you certainly don’t know about, but Medivizor could help you know about.”

Medivizor has been recognised as a top mHealth solution since it won four contests last year, including the mHealth Israel conference in December 2014. “This is a major milestone for us, as the conference’s platform enables us to share ideas with other healthcare entrepreneurs, potential investors and industry giants,” said Givoly.

According to Givoly, doctors, clinics and medical institutions are now encouraging their patients to use Medivizor as a source of personalised health information.

Searching for Meaning

In 2013, on the day of her 15th birthday, Tal’s daughter suddenly developed swollen ankles. On the advice her doctor, Tal took her to the emergency room. Her symptoms progressed and by later that evening, she had started to develop congestive heart failure. Two days later, Tal was told that, in order to survive, his daughter would need a heart transplant.

Like any concerned parent, Tal turned to the internet for information. Tal started by using standard search engines such as Google and websites such as WebMD. He found the information from many of these sites to be poorly organized, repetitive, and many times, out of date.

Over time, Tal found that he was becoming a “chronic web researcher.” At the same time, he found it almost impossible to know what information and recommendations were accurate and reliable to help with the care of a loved one.

Empower Yourself with Medivizor

Tal’s experience with his daughter affirmed his determination to make Medivizor, a company he co-founded in 2012, a reality.

Patients and family members who subscribe to Medivizor get personalized, medical information delivered to their e-mail inbox on an ongoing basis. The information is up-to-date and, more often than not, cutting edge. In addition, Medivizor provides patients with information about ongoing clinical trials.

We interpret statistics, so you don’t have to figure them out. The information is interpreted in 10th grade English, and we try to contrast it with other science. If there is any bias we see in a study, we’ll also mention that. And that ‘s what we have tried to build.” – Tal Givoly, Mediviizor

Best of all, Medivizor is FREE and it is HIPAA compliant – that means it is private. In order for the information to be personalized, however, you will need to answer a few basic questions about yourself and your diagnosis when you sign up. Then the software kicks in and you begin receiving medical information specific to your diagnosis.

Making Healthcare Better for Everyone

One feature of Medivizor that Tal is particularly proud of is its interactivity. Tal wants to know if you like the information you receive, and welcomes your feedback.

“We need you and others to help us make this an even better resource for patients and their families.”

Dr. Salisz and I are excited to be able to share Medivzor with you. It is a service that complements the already helpful materials available through our connection with the Urology Care Foundation. By adding Medivizor, we are trying to provide you with all that you need to become an empowered healthcare consumer. To sign up for Medivizor, simply click here.

HR AVANT-GARDE | Vincent Suppa Jun 29, 2015

Tal Givoly is disrupting the mobile health industry and how patients and caregivers use the internet. Why? He has a better way where medical information is personalized, updated, understandable, and most importantly, actionable for patients and their caregivers.

Givoly saw this need up close when he was looking for information to help save his daughter from congestive heart failure. His New York City-based startup, Medivizor, spares the patient hours of fruitless internet searches and enables healthcare providers to involve patients in managing their health in an effective way that serves both patient and doctor.

Givoly, the CEO and co-founder of Medivizor, has more than 25 years of technology and software development experience, including management positions in R&D and product management, with 25 patents to his credit. Named by Forbes as one of “six companies that are re-imagining existing tech trends,” Medivizor has taken first-place in numerous competitions, including 1776 Challenge Cup in Tel Aviv, Most Investable Startup at Interface Digital Health Summit in Vancouver, Doctors 2.0 & You in Paris, and mHealth Israel Conference.

Most intelligence failures are not related to a lack of data points, but stem from an overabundance of data points that hamper timely analysis. In parallel, when patients receive a distressing diagnosis, they access the internet searching for information. Unfortunately for the layperson, there is an overabundance of information of varying quality and usefulness. Even on websites that are medically specific, the information provided is generic and not tailored to the patient’s unique medical profile. Additionally, the latest scientific developments are first published in medical journals and not yet distilled into more accessible language. And with our product, as science evolves around specific medical conditions, our customers receive timely updates.

Who wins with this disruption?

The patient wins. Currently there is an unequal distribution of information between doctor and patent. Patients have tried to recalibrate this balance by using popular search engines to access medical information inherit with all the constraints previously mentioned. With Medivizor, patients obtain information that is accessible, non-repetitive, reliable and tailored to their individual medical profile.

Doctors win because an educated patient is served more efficiently. Doctors can spend more time actually treating patients and discussing realistic options and less time addressing questions provoked by chronic web searches. Also, Medivizor provides information to doctors, who cannot conceivably have enough time to stay abreast of all the latest developments given that there are thousands of new research papers published annually.

What skills are most essential to your firm’s success, yet in limited supply?

Realizing this vision requires skills in diverse domains, and we’re glad to possess them. My partner, who I know from elementary school, Oren Fuerst, has a solid business background after being on the faculty of Columbia and Yale and starting five med-tech companies, including pioneering companies such as Prepex. My other partner, Prof. Steven Kaplan, MD, is a leading researcher and physician who serves as Chief of the Male Health Clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College. He’s also an entrepreneur, having been a founder of MediData Solutions (MDSO). My background is in leading invention, product development, and innovation. Together, we combine all these skills and experience to potentially help millions of people coping with serious or chronic illness.

Technology has barely been applied to health. The flurry of innovation we’re seeing now is barely scratching the surface. Digital health requires both perseverance and extreme entrepreneurship to bring and extract value.

Processing vast amounts of new information, figuring out what is of potential clinical relevance to each individual, and explaining it to them in a way they can understand and act, is not only difficult, but has yet to be done. We are fixing that.

Right now, the service is only in English and covers a limited number of medical conditions. As we grow, we will expand our offerings. We continue to seek software developers to improve our algorithm, medical linguists to increase market breath to reach non-English speaking people, and an increasing array of doctors specializing in more diseases to help people suffering across a broader spectrum of conditions.

Are you still looking for venture capital?

We’ve already raised $1.2M, and we are now in the midst of closing a financing round that should give us the runway we need to succeed.

Following a diagnosis, a patient becomes a chronic web crawler, searching the web for medical information about their condition. They can’t verify what information is trustworthy or current while the lines between informational websites and those selling a product are intentionally blurred.

Patients are even less sure of what’s medically relevant to them. Further research is often repetitious or confronts patients with their own knowledge barriers, since new research is published in medical journals by scientists for scientists.

Medivizor fixes this problem by providing state of the art science for YOU followed by updates as science evolves. All this in 10th grade English explained and interpreted in a way that makes it accessible to the layperson.

Our algorithm uses mini-medical profiles to select from thousands of clinical reports and then summarizes the information most relevant to the patient or caregiver. You don’t have to search; we provide the information directly to your inbox. Our unique selling proposition is that Medivizor is the only company that provides any one of these services, let alone all of them.

What is the biggest risk to your firm’s success?

With an aging population and people living longer with treatable chronic diseases, our market is rapidly growing. With internet access rising exponentially in developing countries, the number of customers able to access our services is growing as well. Patients have responded to higher health care costs by proactively managing their health. Consequently, if there are any risks, it would be for our company not to grow at a rate that meets demand for our services.

What Key intellectual property has the company developed?

We have a patent pending for our personalization technology that provides summaries of complex medical information accessible to the layperson combined with the wisdom of the crowd. Also, we continue to grow a vast library of cutting-edge medical content written so that patients and caregivers can understand the latest science.

What metric best captures your firm’s success?

The number of Medivizor subscribers best measures our business success, while the number of improved health outcomes for our customers best captures how Medivizor positively impacts society.

What entrepreneur do you admire?

Steve Jobs is one of my idols. Larger than life, in fact. However, at Medivizor, our innovation is very different. The world is different today and not every company has the ability to do what Apple could. We are solving a big problem and intend to solve related problems that bring additional value to our patients and stakeholders.

Jeff Bezos created and continues to lead a great company and made many strategic moves that I admire. Amazon took risks that might have cannibalized its own revenue.

Tell us about a customer who was impacted by your product?

In one sense, we are in the anxiety reduction business. I would say all of our customers are directly impacted by the service we provide in triaging what they need to know in a digestible manner to improve their health outcomes. Confidentiality precludes specific examples, but the stories are as abundant as the number of our subscribers. We do get thank you letters often from our subscribers. People explicitly tell us of the value the information provides. Here’s video of one of our subscribers explaining her perspective.

There is a large institutional impact as well. Hospitals are promoting Medivizor to their patients to efficiently provide cutting-edge, personalized health information. We help hospitals serve their patients better, quicker and for less cost.

What does transformational innovation of your product look like years from now?

The Internet of Things is poised to become pervasive and the number of people being connected to their smartphones soon will be augmented by smartwatches. People have access to a plethora of personalized health data points, monitoring their wellness in real time. I can envision when those captured data points talk directly to Medivizor to deliver information to patients that they need, before they have even made the request. Also, as we see precision and personalized medicine evolve, the first step we are taking in this revolution is further personalizing the health information we provide to patients and their medical teams.

I’m afraid of not being able to execute fast enough and effectively enough to realize our vision. We have a lot to do and so much to cover. We plan to grow in both depth and breath this year.

I love my family and the support of the many in the growing Medivizor team, supporters, and partners that are making our vision a reality.

In terms of regret – I don’t look back often with regret. Sometimes one needs to make tough decisions and live with them. If I make mistakes, I try to avoid repeating them. I believe that people and organizations that don’t learn are doomed in the long run.

If you wore a warning label, what would it say?

Nobody cares about your health as much as you or your caregivers. Stay informed.

Through apps or the web, mHealth is providing more personalized healthcare without a visit to the doctor’s office

Mobile health, or mHealth, is a fast-growing global industry that uses mobile technology to improve the practice of medicine. And Israel is at the cutting edge of that technology.

The industry in Israel has seen a growth spurt in recent years, with 28 digital health companies established in 2014, up from 17 the year before, according to mHealth Israel.

Mobile health is all about the apps – enabling people to interact while on the move with websites and online databases that help both with the maintenance of health, such as fitness apps that guide users to proper exercise and diet as well as apps that help individuals with health problems, including diabetics. Levi Shapiro, lead organizer of the mHealth Israel Conference, said Israel is an ideal setting for mobile health technologies due to its start-up culture and healthcare system.

“Israel has also had electronic medical records for 24 years,” he noted, giving start-ups a huge trove of historical data to tap into.

The mHealth conference, which was held last month at Hebrew University brought together investors, entrepreneurs, health professional and hospital executives to see the latest technology produced in Israel for mobile health and discussed trends and opportunities in the industry.

The focus of the conference, however, was global. Presentation topics included digital healthcare in Africa and China, and market rankings for health apps in the European Union.

Among the Israeli mobile health companies that are operating abroad is Medivizor, which personalizes health information for individuals, said Dr. Tal Givoly, the founder and CEO of the company.

Medivizor maintains a large database that allows users to input personal data relating to their own situation — users answer 10-15 personal questions about themselves and their treatment history and, via an app or web site, get back information and updates about treatments, clinical trials, relevant medical institutions, experts and more.

Founded in 2012, Medivizor aims to provide users with information that is easy to understand and relevant to the user.

“There is too much medical research being published for any doctor to keep up with,” Givoly said, “so we process the information for both doctors and patients.”

Last year, Medivizor entered into a partnership with New York Presbyterian Hospital, providing information for hospital patients and staff powered by the Medivizor database.

The need for the service is most acute for people with chronic and serious illnesses, Givoly stressed, although not all medical conditions are currently covered by the service.

“People all find the same information on the Internet, but it’s not personalized,” he said. “The Internet doesn’t know about them, but we do, and we can help them ferret out the information that will really help them.”

Your Family Matters: Dr. Keith Kanner interviews Tal Givoly

Your Family Matters / Radioactive Broadcasting Nov 25, 2013

TuDiabetes Live Interview with Ronen Keinan, COO of Medivizor

tudiabetes.org Jan 16, 2014

Ways to get free and reliable online medical advice - Live radio interview

WTOP / CBS Radio Jul 06, 2014

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Personalizing What Matters Most - Tal Givoly @ Stanford MedX 2014

Stanford Medicine X Nov 25, 2014

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Solution - How Does it Work?

Medivizor fulfills its mission by providing people with serious or chronic medical conditions (or those who care for them) with personalized information updates that are relevant, understandable, and actionable.

The service is different from other services because what we provide is truly personalized. We believe that we can solve the ‘needle in the haystack’ challenge. By knowing about the person who is sick and his/her particular condition, our technology will sift through available information and select just what is credible and relevant. We couple this with insights from our medical team and with information gleaned from the social web such that the resulting information is:

Relevant – we aim to provide only information that is truly relevant to an individual.

Understandable – we provide the information in words most can understand.

Actionable – we would like to help you identify your possible options.

Once you register for your private and free account, you are requested to answer several questions describing yourself and your medical conditions (or those of the person you are caring for). Medivizor then begins to provide you personalized information updates – suited just for you.

Medivizor is currently in an public beta and supports several important medical conditions, including 88% of cancer incidence (breast cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, and melanoma), diabetes, 75% of cardiovascular disease incidence (hypertension, coronary artery disease / heart disease / heart attack, and stroke), infertility and rheumatoid arthritis. We will expand gradually to support additional conditions.

If you are interested in checking us out because you are coping with one of the supported conditions or caring for someone else who is, simply go to medivizor.com and follow the simple, free registration instructions.

FAQ’s (Frequently Asked Questions)

Your personal information and that of all patients is not shared without your explicit permission. Your identity does not need to be shared with us. To provide you with relevant medical information, Medivizor needs you to provide us some information, with as much detail as you would like to provide. Medivizor will need to know your email address to be able to get back to you. You will have control of whether you would like to be connected to a third party, if Medivizor thinks that would be beneficial to you or the person you care for. Our full privacy policy is posted here.

Yes. When you sign up, we’ll ask you whether you are entering information for yourself or for someone you care for. You’ll be asked to provide a nickname for yourself and for the person who’s sick so we can clearly refer to each of you. You will be asked to enter medical information you know about the person who is sick. If you don’t know some of the information, enter all that you can and we’ll ask you to complete some of the rest later on after you have obtained it. The more you provide, the more specific and personalized the information we provide will be.

Yes, the basic service of personalized information updates is free of charge for the people that cope with serious or chronic medical conditions or those who care for them. Over time, we may introduce additional valuable services with associated costs. In no case will you be surprised about any cost, and we intend to keep most, if not all, of the valuable service available for free to its users.

While the basic service of personalized information updates is free, Medivizor may introduce additional valuable services with associated costs. In future, we may add some advertising to help support the free service. Since we would like to help connect people with information, clinical trials, researchers, service providers, experts, and others that are relevant to them, we may also collect revenue from such third parties. We will not share your individual personal information with others without your consent. In any case, we will decide whether or not to provide information solely based on its potential benefit to our users.

We take the utmost measures to ensure that your personally identifiable information is never compromised. We consider the privacy of your information as our highest responsibility. We comply with HIPAA and review our security/privacy practices on an ongoing basis.

Medivizor is a startup. Our executive management team is posted here. Our mission is to improve the lives of people with serious or chronic medical conditions and those who care for them, and to effectively apply software and the social web to the field of health for the betterment of humanity. Therefore, our interests are clearly aligned with yours. We will keep your information private per our privacy policy. The information we provide is determined by our technology, medical expertise, and information we obtain. We do not provide medical advice or medical diagnosis. The intent is that any information we provide would be discussed with your healthcare professional.

The service is currently in public beta while we continue to perfect the service. As we continue to improve our service, feedback from our users is vital to the this process. We currently support a few important medical conditions. If we support the medical condition you told us about when you signed up, you will receive an email immediately. If you haven’t received the email to activate your account, don't hesitate to contact us via email at info@medivizor.com. If we don’t yet support your medical condition, we’ll let you know as soon as we do. Thank you for your patience as we gradually add more medical conditions and improve the service for the benefit of you and others.

Medivizor provides personalized health information that includes the state of the
art of medical science, cutting-edge research, clinical trials, guidelines, lifestyle
tips, and more. For example: Medivizor would take this research paper published
in The New England Journal of Medicine when it gets pubished and summarizes
it and its implication in
a way mere mortals can understand (10th grade English reading level) - and send it only to the people for which it is personally relevant!
In fact, that's exactly what Robyn Stoller (@CancerHAWK and now reporting for
Huffington Post) found most compelling when she evaluated Medivizor.
Check out a sample of items from our repository here.